The Lane That Runs Out of Time

Rats!  Didn't quite manage an August blog in August.  Here it is in September. Piece I wrote as a contribution to a collection of tales, tall and otherwise, by local writers - all connected with the North Dorset town of Shaftesbury, where I currently live.

The Lane That Runs Out of Time

We don’t know, of course, exactly where it will emerge in 2020.  It could appear abutted onto one of the leafy lanes that run down the slopes to St.James.  It might just turn up in the town centre, tucked into that grey stone block of buildings between Trinity Church and the High Street.  Or perhaps, seeking the novelty of the new, between identikit housing on Rifles Road or Badger Walk in that forlorn estate to the east of the town.  Wherever it appears, it will remain accessible – if you can detect it – for just twenty four hours, and then it will disappear without so much as a puff of smoke.

No one knows where it goes when it is not present in Shaftesbury.  Its residents have no interest in telling us.  When it last showed up, back in 2016, it was down in Enmore Green, on Well Lane between two of those old stone houses you encounter just before the A30 cuts it off.  When it shows, it has this knack of looking like it’s always been there.  You might even walk down it without ever realising that you have entered a numinous zone.  When it’s here, it’s very Shaftesbury.  A mingled mix of architectures that span the centuries – old stone, red brick, timber clad, or deco glass and concrete.  You can turn a lot of corners in this town and not know what you’re about to encounter, so this little lane is perfectly camouflaged, even managing to dovetail with the newer estates if it finds it necessary to do so.

Its residents are a motley lot, but they function as a community and it’s doubtful whether any of them would ever want to move house.  So you’ll not see any roadside signs from Connells or Chaffers amongst the slightly scruffy hedges or low stone walls with their surrounding adornments of snowdrops, crocuses, primroses and daffs.  Wherever it is they are when they are not in Shaftesbury, it seems to suit them just as well.  But on that day when they get here, you can rest assured that they will nearly all, individually or collectively, make a pilgrimage to the Bargain’s shop to stock up on woolly hats, candles, batteries, hair adornments and post-cards with images that look three-dimensional.  Check it out on the day.  But mind, it can get pretty crowded in there, both tills in constant use.

Take a wander up the street, round the corner and down the steps to Underground Music, just above Gold Hill, and you’ll encounter at some point in the day one of the lane’s most colourful residents.  He’s getting on a bit now, his once imposing black moustache and hair now a thinner grey.  But under a multicoloured coat he’ll be sporting a dazzling tee shirt and a middle eastern waistcoat. And with them wearing a psychedelic pendant and an orange baseball cap.  For all the signs of age, his jaw is firm, his face strong and somehow tanned.  He’s come to buy reeds for his flute, has Raja Ram, and perhaps a hand-drum or two.

Pearl, his next door neighbour, scours the charity shops, picks out the funkiest threads she can find – fringed items a speciality – and with a tilt of her tinted glasses and a friendly cackle, hoarsely asks the attendants if she can try them on.  By the time she heads back to the lane, her wild hair blowing in the breeze, she’ll be toting a sackful of outfits and a carrier bag laden with quarts of Jack Daniels from Shaftesbury Wines.

Not all the residents who spread out through the town that day are quite as colourful as these two.  Charles in his sombre black suit displays only a hint of colour with the rakish neckerchief knotted to the left of his Adam’s apple.  He too has just emerged from the wine shop, where they have slipped him a bottle of absinthe from under the counter.  He spends much of the day in his favoured parts of the town, St. James Street and Bell Street, where he feels a little more at home, a little safer from the flowers of evil.  In contrast Buster, in his ill fitting suit and boater, spends several hours in the Barton Hill skate park, where he shows the young ‘uns on scooters and skateboards hilariously but exactly how it’s done.

Marilyn and Audrey select the finest lingerie that Shirley Alum has to offer, while Coco stares in mute disgust through the windows of Superdrug.  Dylan spends the entire day in the Mitre and John Pierpont calls in at Lloyds Bank to check the interest on a sum of money he deposited in 1904.  You can hardly get across town without bumping into one or another of these folk.  And they are friendly, personable types on the whole, happy to invite you to the parties they’ll be holding in the lane that evening.

But here a word of caution.  If you choose to join them in their revelry, be sure to leave before midnight.  For if you are still there when March 1^st commences, you will not see Shaftesbury again for 1,460 days and nights.  But at least you might find out where it is they go for all that length of time, those extraordinary people who live on Leap Year Lane.