A Downland Index, published by uniformbooks in the Summer of 2016, documents 100 successive runs across the South Downs, each written in 100 words. The 72 page book begins with an index of the words that appear in the 100 entries, which are each dated in the manner of a diary, and culiminates in a short essay contextualising the project.
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October 30th
Leap, splash and skirt the milky tea puddles up to the ridge: height lets in the distance and how things connect. “The light is falling.” Leaning down the long curving slope, reverberating the stone archway below the train track, following the dual carriageway back to the city (I wince and grate my teeth at the shrieking nearside lane and the thicker, lower, jagged tearing from the further lane; fumes in my throat and eyes). The sun squashes scarlet below the horizon and the skin above my right sock is warmed briefly as it slices through a cairn of horse dung.
November 1st
Above the far rim of the valley bowl, the fences on either side of the chalk path rise into a mist that opens and closes, letting shapes loom, find detail and then dissolve: ramblers and runners, the big bull, a cow scratching its ear with a hind leg, the damp green of clover, the yellow of hawkbit and the purple of a vetch, another bronze beech leaf spinning, the fourth dewpond strobed out of greyness by camera flashes. When I turn for home, the villages down on the plain glow in the blue dark like oilrigs seen from an aircraft.
November 4th
Eyes fixing on mine, a dog walker cupped my left elbow in his palm and said, “That rotten branch fell like a dead body. Straight down. Right down”. Leaving him with the branch, I trotted through the wind-roared woods: saw a blue and green tent protected by a crude lean-to, heard an electricity pole sputter and thrum and felt a shower of sideways rain. 3 buzzards showed their feather details near the out-of-time copse, 7 magpies left a bare tree at its entrance, 47 crows strutted the hill above the sett, 14 grouse exploded out of the valley bowl field.
November 6th
It is still beautiful up here. A cold foul rain gusts from every side, toes wet in mud-coated shoes, throbbing right knee, aching lower back. The low dark sky has pulled the land in tight: blackened cow parsley, dripping fence squares, shards of flint, lumps of chalk, puddles and grasses, rolled waves of ploughed soil to the left, new shoots to the right, the watchful cows drenched. A mile more along the ridge and -turning from closing the farm-twine-gate - I am stopped by a rainbow of five hikers on their way down from the Beacon: laughter is our recognition.
Leap, splash and skirt the milky tea puddles up to the ridge: height lets in the distance and how things connect. “The light is falling.” Leaning down the long curving slope, reverberating the stone archway below the train track, following the dual carriageway back to the city (I wince and grate my teeth at the shrieking nearside lane and the thicker, lower, jagged tearing from the further lane; fumes in my throat and eyes). The sun squashes scarlet below the horizon and the skin above my right sock is warmed briefly as it slices through a cairn of horse dung.
November 1st
Above the far rim of the valley bowl, the fences on either side of the chalk path rise into a mist that opens and closes, letting shapes loom, find detail and then dissolve: ramblers and runners, the big bull, a cow scratching its ear with a hind leg, the damp green of clover, the yellow of hawkbit and the purple of a vetch, another bronze beech leaf spinning, the fourth dewpond strobed out of greyness by camera flashes. When I turn for home, the villages down on the plain glow in the blue dark like oilrigs seen from an aircraft.
November 4th
Eyes fixing on mine, a dog walker cupped my left elbow in his palm and said, “That rotten branch fell like a dead body. Straight down. Right down”. Leaving him with the branch, I trotted through the wind-roared woods: saw a blue and green tent protected by a crude lean-to, heard an electricity pole sputter and thrum and felt a shower of sideways rain. 3 buzzards showed their feather details near the out-of-time copse, 7 magpies left a bare tree at its entrance, 47 crows strutted the hill above the sett, 14 grouse exploded out of the valley bowl field.
November 6th
It is still beautiful up here. A cold foul rain gusts from every side, toes wet in mud-coated shoes, throbbing right knee, aching lower back. The low dark sky has pulled the land in tight: blackened cow parsley, dripping fence squares, shards of flint, lumps of chalk, puddles and grasses, rolled waves of ploughed soil to the left, new shoots to the right, the watchful cows drenched. A mile more along the ridge and -turning from closing the farm-twine-gate - I am stopped by a rainbow of five hikers on their way down from the Beacon: laughter is our recognition.
