And as he walked, the rain settling in a mistycover across a bed of stone-enclosedpastures, the Crab Man enjoyed themetaphor of disturbing and being disturbedby many fields rather than simply tramping asolitary line. He crossed an empty pastureand, looking back, the sign on the gate said:“Bull In Field”. He shrugged. There or notthere, there is always, in some sense “Bull inField”.He passed a young man carrying a plasticlunch box and a pickaxe thrown over hisshoulder, looking like a refugee fleeinghistory.“Off for a day’s work?”“Definitely.”It’s was a long walk that day and he’d startedan hour early. J----, from the B&B, rang the

Crab Man’s office to say she was worried forhim. His blisters were bad, but he walkedthrough them, the skin bursting andhardening. The pain was hungry, it wanted toeat up his concentration. Today, he mustactively “look” in order to see.Beside the Derwent, wreaths had been laid. Abucket improvised as a gate latch. Signs toldof voles, brook lampreys and great crestednewts. He had the names now, but he couldnot see the animals. He became lost in somefields and then emerged along a road wherethe backyards were like miniature memorialgardens and theme parks.“No Respect For Old Lane” says a headline ina discarded newspaper.He climbs Curbar Gap and onto the moors.“Good morning!” The Crab salutes a couple walking their dog, just out of their car.“Going far?”But their walk is a private affair and theydon’t want to talk. Nor any walker or cyclisthe meets this day. And so it becomes a dayof private journeying. Listening to themonologue in his head. Forcing his

consciousness out of his blisters and into thefields and moors he’s passing through. Theroad stretching two miles ahead, vehiclesshimmering in the distance like the demon’struck in

Jeepers Creepers

. He enjoys thespace of this place. On top of the Gap he’dlooked back and seen the rusting shape of abarn he’d passed, like a monopoly hotel, apiece of geometry on a rucked carpet of green. Things spread out, thoughts disperse.…And all the time he was looking for a sign, asymbol on the skyline: the shape of threetrees planted as a Trinity, spaced equaldistances apart, and then four trees plantedtogether to make a mutant atrocity of tangled trunks. Somewhere out there. On ahill with a view of C-----------.He stops for a plate of duck and twoFranciskanerHefeweissbiers at thenewly refurbishedHighwayman at E----moor. There had been atime when the taste of this beer had meant hehad arrived, fully and completely, in Munich.It was the taste of that place. Now it is part of the flux, of the globalised flow.