Hi everyone,

This is very raw, and other than a working title of The Shaman, nothing to do with paganism :-)     - but would it make you want to read more? It's an idea for a book that I've been mulling around for quite a while now, and I think the time is becoming ripe... and yes, ultimately, the finished idea would have a lot to do with paganism!

Today was a good day. The evening before, I'd watched the Lunar Module land on the moon. I'd waited all of my short life to see this happen, and I unashamedly cried. Then, after a fitful night's sleep, I'd rushed downstairs to turn on the television for the news. Despite Apollo 11 orbiting the moon, a quarter of a million miles away, this was no mean feat in my grandparents' house: first it was always a challenge to see if the electricity was stable enough to heat the television tubes, and then someone had to hold the aerial and often perform complex gymnastics in order to receive a signal that could be transformed into a snowy black and white image still enough to watch. Everything had cooperated. The TV had started with the first click of the switch, and I'd not even needed to move the aerial from its perch on the mantel piece above the unlit coal fire. That morning, not even the musty, dirty smell of a century of dead fires, that always lingered in the room, bothered me. Half way through my bowl of cornflakes, the news came on. Almost immediately, blurry image of the ladder leading down from the Lunar Module filled the screen, and Neil Armstrong descended onto the surface of the moon. Moments later, after being warned about the last step, a good "three footer", Buzz Adrin joined him, saying ""Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation". It had happened some four hours earlier, but for me, it was as good as live: I was there with them.

Yes, today was a good day. And now, after an hour's climb in the cool sunshine of the early morning, damp from the dew still painting an iridescent sheen on the grassy verges of the mountain, I was sitting on a stile, at my favourite spot on the Earth, the highest point in Glamorgan, and from where I could see forever. Or almost. And from this vantage point, I imagined a future more glorious than anything humanity had ever known, for if we could walk on the moon, what next? I had tons of ideas. I had tons of ideals, too. I had my own thoughts on how to be, what my family would be like; a good job that would allow me to break free from the shackles of generations of miners and pass through the distant horizon that was still indistinct in the morning haze. That would even take me to explore other parts of the universe, far from here. Ideals that would justify the greatness of man. Little did I realise that ideals, left long enough, become dreams, and dreams become buried at the ends of rainbows, so that no matter how far or long one searches, they are always just out of reach. And at that tender age of 11, reflecting alone on that Welsh mountain, I didn't for one moment contemplate that when there are enough collective ideals and collective dreams, all colliding with each other, that a rainbow could suddenly dissolve into a beautiful, magnificent desolation.