The University of Craneflies.

The fast, busy pace of life seems to have returned, when I was determined not to let it. I wanted to keep some of the lockdown simplicity; the time to notice and not let time run on so quickly, like grain through my fingers. Yet, before we know it, we are packing the car full of my son’s things for University – relieved we can get him there at all.

It is an idyllic place to study – and the excitement of all those bright, young, hopeful souls, finally released (albeit, only a little) into their future is palpable. There is a lake with resident kingfishers and traveling otters, a walled garden and, although my son shakes his head wryly, as we bump over an all-too-familiar cattle grid and are held up by the shepherd moving his sheep (as we were when we left home) I know he’ll love it. And a city full of urban edginess, culture, diversity and opportunity is only a short bus ride away. 

Back home, I find connections that link us. The winter gulls that fly home to roost each night, lifting the sunset from the west country on their wings, follow The Wansdyke. An ancient path and boundary that sits under our home hill – and his new one. If he needed to, he’d have no trouble walking it home.  The last, late wasps riot inside an apple left on the tree. It buzzes softly with the bass of his guitar and amp, that no longer reveberates through the house.

But the insects of the moment are craneflies, their summer’s-end appearance, gold-lit by the post-harvest sun, as predictable as that of house spiders.

They are strangely beautiful, with something of the sad carnival elephant in their ponderous framework. They feel their way uncertainly, abseiling walls as if they are trying to push off into the wider airspace without succeeding, sailing their six, difficult, tentpole legs on inadequate, gauzy wings.

I have so much writing to do and they come to the light of the laptop, late at night, reaching out like weak swimmers for its flat, blue, swimming-pool screen. And they buzz and knock against the lampshade when I am making notes. When they brush my cheek in the darkened bedroom (light as a child’s breath on your face before waking) they are not unwelcome.

In the morning, the brevity of their lives is evident, wrapped in the inverted tents of spider webs, like blown over, collapsed marquees. Their basket of legs are folded in neatly, like a prayer to a job done, like the filament of a lightbulb at the centre of the gauzy cradles. Discarded wings and legs lie on the window ledge like sentences edited out. Some kind of cutting room floor.

He texts to ask about cooking pasta, recommends some new bands, tells me about new mates, ends with the spotting of a barn owl and the words, ‘it’s cranefly season, Mum!’ He notices.