Postscript

Some day I may find the time to record more of my life in these times that people may discover, vicariously, past times that are no more and are unlikely to return as technology becomes more sophisticated and peoples aspirations different..

The year turns from 1992 to 1993. There is news that Twyford Down is raped by men who would destroy the railways and public transport for a penny's worth of profit; they know not the worth of the land; they would turn this land, this sceptred isle, this God-given asset into concrete and tarmac to cut five minutes from a journey by motor car. They would cover the very soil that feeds them, that will receive their corpses at their death; they would hide it from the sun that warms it and the rain that cools it so that it shall never produce food again in their lifetimes or their children's. They dismiss society as an aberration.

Twyford Down situated near Winchester is linked to Tenant's Hill and Cissbury Ring near Worthing, to Oxford and Lincoln, Shropshire and all points on the earth's surface where men care for her well-being. These locations are sanctified by the blood and sweat of generations now subjected to the passage of history yet without a record that they passed this way except the marks of their relationship with the land. Here a prehistoric settlement shows up as darkened rings of soil, and here a barbed wire fence erected thirty or more years ago still confines to safety the sheep and cattle of Sussex and Hampshire Down. But we are transient occupants of this world and even now men plot to obliterate these memorials to our passing as their greed destroys the life and work of previous generations; as they seek the cheap options out of their political morass.

As the year turns it marks the tenth anniversary of Roger's death. In the church where I now serve, that marked his transition from bachelorhood to marriage and hence the way to fatherhood, I light a candle as a symbol of our relationship and to his memory (although I need no such reminder). Such observances become more necessary as man destroys what man has built.