Change

The family have returned home - wisely avoiding the forecast heavy weather in the morning with babies on board. We are left with space and silence; a lot of images on our phones, but much more vivid ones in our memories and our hearts. I can feel the shifting of small bodies in my arms, and still hear the small sounds of effort, as they struggle to understand the sensations this unfamiliar world throws at them

With inner warmth glowing, we set out on a brief afternoon walk in a chilly autumnal breeze, under slate-grey skies that drain the landscape of colour. In a different mood, it would be melancholy. The fields do not just hold clues to the past, they scream them at you. The contorted surface of mining spoil is a hazzard at almost every step - still there as it was left by the miners, just coated with a veneer of green. Sealed shafts appear unexpected in the middle of fields. Every ridge-top is broken by the decaying shells of buildings with uncertain purpose

Truth be told, it is not just the lost mining, or the turbulent skies that make this a mournful place with an uncertain future. Even its current use feels precarious and threatened. Hiding in this picture is a farm building in poor repair, one of many. The stone walls are neglected and tumbledown; farming on this land feels as if it is passing into history, every bit as much as mining. The extra depicts one possible future, but I doubt if that will be on a significant scale

Like our precious boys, change is guaranteed but the destination is unknown