A chance encounter

It's strange how we sometimes stumble by accident or coincidence on things that go on to become very important in our lives. People too at times, people we never expected to encounter but who we come across and who stay with us in one way or another. If I hadn't been researching a particular folk tale for a radio script last week I would perhaps never have come across a book that's affected me deeply - and through it met a family whose story is spellbinding.

The Life of Rebecca Jones was translated by Lloyd Jones from the book O! Tyn y Gorchudd by Angharad Price which won the prose medal at the National Eisteddfod in 2002. It's based on the author's own family history and centres on a farm at Maesglasau in mid Wales, spanning the whole of the twentieth century. The farm is as much a character in the book as Rebecca and her three blind brothers; the description of the hills and the crags, the valley and its stream, the vegetation and the wildlife has to be some of the best, most keenly observed nature writing I've ever read. The book brings Welsh history alive, a changing world seen through the eyes of a product "of a Welsh chapel childhood". And the last page - as I now know others have found it - was truly devastating.  A brilliant, brilliant book that I am so thankful to have come across.

In my own valley here autumn now feels as if it's beginning to turn into winter - the leaves no longer rustle under your feet but cling in muddy clumps to your boots and the mornings are decidedly icy. A walk on the Blorenge last week was exhilarating but very wet and windy - so I was amazed to spot wild swimmers braving the choppy waters at Keepers Pond! On my morning walk with the dog I leave the river to the ducks and just admire the autumnal mists from the banks ...