1-5-3 Brief Notes In Passing

There were four things remarkable about the afternoon.

The first were the black billowing clouds of smoke coming from the top of the mountain where the monastery lay. They rose high into the still air and then stretched into thin dark layers that remained visible throughout the evening and into the sunset.

The second was the meeting with Farmer Mollen which resulted in him giving me a dilapidated farm a way off from the town in the shrub lands in return for getting his own house back, and he threw the cook and the young maid in for goodwill, and regular food and wood deliveries.

The third was the utter non-welcome I received from my mother and the lack of connection I felt with her.

And the fourth was that my little brother Sef had died of a fever, just a tenday after I had left him.