Long before I read
The Black Island, I remember being fascinated with England.
In school we had a geography text-book written by a certain Goh Cheng Leong (
Certificate and Physical Geography?). I remember a picture of the English countryside in it -rolling country, green grass with beautiful trees. Picture-perfect, it seemed, in a way, but that isn't the phrase at all. I don't know, seeing what I have seen of England, that picture-perfect has anything at all to do with the place.
The next thing I remember is a photograph of Crummock Water at one of its edges - it seemed like no one had ever been there, but nature seemed to say something to me - it wasn't the grandness of the Canadian Rockies or the heavenly abode of Kilimanjaro. But it was calmness, homeliness, earthiness and yet some mystery. I am struck, even now, with the feeling of deep-seated emotions that stir my soul, that seem to say, "It's a simple, beautiful world.....and yet, there's more to know all the time; but stay......let each moment be. There will be other days and other places, but this, here, is where you need to be. So Just Be Here Now. Look at the water's edge. Look at the ancient ripples on the lake. Look up into those eternal mountains. This is where you need to be at this moment."
Then there was Nessie, all inextricably tied up with the lore and the dim tales of Scotland's ethereal beauty - it was almost legend, not real. I must say here that whatever I had heard about Scotland, there was nothing that could have prepared me for what I actually saw. It is now an eternal truth for me - that the land has this uncanny, almost unearthly way of not just stirring but totally arresting the soul so deeply that the mere forms of rocks, water and trees are just the beginning. It is a land of the soul - not of the earth.
I thought Loch Ness was the most terrible of places on earth - what if, alone at the water's edge with a storm brewing, Nessie jumped out at me, black with foreboding, against that almost white expanse of water!!! I would have died. All the dark omens haunting my fragile thoughts would then crystallise in one terrible moment of sheer horror!! I thought, is all of Scotland Loch Ness? No, I was to learn - it isn't all Loch Ness. It's Eilean Donan, and Glenfinnan, and Cairn Gorm and Skye and Torridon, not to speak of Glencoe and Loch Lomond and the Orkneys and Mull.....and it never ends.
Then there were cloudy days, and there was one unforgettable, grey December morning in 1987 - looking across the church compound. It was carpeted with falling leaves, and the light was not sure.....it looked like how I would like my soul to look if someone could see inside.
In
The Black Island, there is the magical sequence at the cliffs where Tintin is almost thrown off them....then there is the fog, those beautiful glens and almost unreal mountains that seem to be easy to climb but yet remain shrouded in impenetrable mystery.....
There was also that cellar in
The Secret of The Unicorn, so bubbling with mystery and ancient lore at every step but which seemed to tug my heart-strings.....go there!!!! It's a land you will never leave ........
England had me, the impressionable child, by the deepest of soul-strings ..... after all these years, now, sometimes I think the land knows me more than I know myself. Sounds unreal? Yes....till you've been there, you're not going to know what I'm talking about.
Let me tell you about it.
I've never actually travelled to England. It's all in my imagination and what I have seen in photographs, read in books, seen on film.... But let's let our imagination run absolutely wild.
One day when I get there, I don't think I will leave.
