Watcher

I have a bit of a thing for standing stones, especially the uncelebrated ones - serving as a cattle rubbing-post, one end of a gateway, the corner-stone of a cottage. Or not repurposed at all, located apparently randomly in field, garden or housing estate, unrelated to modern land use and just, well, standing

The decision by OS to include them on maps makes them a convenient objective or waypoint on a walk. When located, they can be underwhelming: unexpectedly small, beset by thistles and thorns, lacking any distinction, though there is always an underlying sense - perhaps the thing that attracts me - that this object has endured here for millenia before my coming and will probably do the same after I am long forgotten

This one was a complete surprise. Absent from the map; unremarked in the guide book, despite its prominence; lacking sign or plaque. Perhaps it is not ancient - the folly of some landowner. Perhaps it is a natural accident, the product of wind, rain or gravity. Perhaps its vaguely priapic appearance - which I only noticed in my photographs - led someone to conclude that the less said about it the better.

Certainly its commanding position on the headland at the entrance to the bay, the presence of an accompanying dark pool, and the sense that it is part of a space set apart, give it a mystical, folk-tale quality, a feeling that this could be a place of ritual and ceremony, where solstice and equinox could be discreetly acknowledged under its watchful silence