The Fingers, Todmorden

Here I am on a walk up to "The Fingers" - a set of rocks high up on a valley in Todmorden. One Sunday afternoon I was walking on the opposite valley side looking at the clouds when my eyes fell onto The Fingers in the distance. This copse of rocks reminds me of human fingers. I had some fingers of Cadbury fudge in my pocket and decided I’d only eat them once stood on one of the fingers. I set off walking.

To keep me company I put on a frightening audio book and got going. You have to walk down into town, cross the road and go back upward again. On the way I got in step with a chatty woman who was in her forties. I could not shut her up. I gave her a Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball, allowing her to pick them from the bag herself. I’d been oil painting and still had smudges of mottled paint on my fingers. She said one of her kids had drawn a moustache on her while she was asleep once - with permanent black marker. She'd scrubbed it off with white spirit which had made her skin flair up so much that she had to book a day off work. She had a metallic edge to her voice that didn’t seem to match her delicately-featured face. At a junction down in the town I was glad when she turned right and I turned left. I put the audio book back on. Passing an alleyway I saw a mattress laid across two bins in an alleyway with a small crying girl underneath it. These days you can't talk to kids can you so I kept on walking.

I crossed the road and went up and up and up. Houses gave way to farms and then high fields where sheep grazed. On a higher path I soon caught sight of The Fingers but had to assassinate some walkers on the way as I wanted the valley side to myself. A strong wind was coming in from Burnley but the photos don’t show it. For the first time in a few months my fingers were cold and I needed gloves. All the time I'd been listening to a scary audio book - The Haunting Of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley. I remember listening to this psychological thriller years ago while walking in blackness across a golf course. I feel into a bunker, scrambled out in shock and jogged to the lane where there were streets lights. The story wasn’t just as scary in the daylight though.

I continued up across fields and made my way alongside a high wall with The Fingers in view. Who built that wall? Are they still alive? Probably not as it was probably there a century ago. I got onto the back of The Fingers and wondered how long they’d been there, too. It’s mostly sheep up there but I saw few cows together in a nearby field. A hare pelted passed me (too big to be a rabbit,) the second one I'd seen this year. I stood on the top of The Fingers and ate a finger of fudge. I couldn't truly enjoy things though as startled sheep in a field behind me were watching me curiously. One was walking slowly with a bad limp and looked to be in pain. It could barely walk and any attack getting into that field would soon kill it. There was nothing I could do and I thought about that sheep before I fell asleep that night.