Dropping anchor at the cottage down the lane

So, we turned down a flooded dirt road with our limousine rocking and creaking like a galleon … we could see our rented house right out there in the distance. It was like a giant liner anchored in a dark sea.

Andrea was driving and I was listening to the One Who Lives Too Far Away and thinking about my wild daughter out in Oz. She is a blizzard of traumas and catastrophes (a tree fell on her car only a few days ago). But she is Mancunian tough and full of bloody determination.

The dirt road was a phantom of mist, trees and black yawning potholes. But the dirty rain coming off the fields was real.

I had the window open to let the thick hot smoke out and let the freezing night air in.

It was just like the old days when I first washed up in the Village of the Damned, 50 miles further into Shropshire and met its dark denizens.

Yep, a good dark spooky night in the heated seats of my battered limo, a reefer fizzing like a cheap firework between my knuckles and a beautiful woman by my side.

Sad songs on the radio.

That big bright ship of a renovated farmhouse ahead was only going to be a place to lay our heads for a couple of months but it undeniably felt like going home right now.

Just for a while.

It has been a long, long trip.

#middletonscriven #bridgenorth #shropshire #farmhouse #rupertscottage #holiday #winter