THE BLACK DOG - FERAL GRACE THE BLACK DOG

Feral Grace was written around old childhood places reclaimed by nature, or replaced by new housing estates. Places long forgotten, their purpose discarded as the world moved on. Yet the memories stay there, caught in the undergrowth, thought of once in a while.

We remember gathering leaf moss from the woods for our tomato plants. Building dams in shallow streams. Filling our wellies with frog spawn and carrying it home like treasure. Small acts that felt large at the time.

Fishing banks where we spent hours. Not talking, just sharing food. Two cans of shandy bass and egg sandwiches. The water long drained and the people gone, but if you look hard enough you can still see the faint outline of where it once was.

Some places still hold the paths where people once walked to work. The tracks remain cut into the land, but the work itself has gone. Trades smashed during the years of Thatcher, ripping communities apart. That memory still lives on. You see it when a scab walks into the pub. Some things are never forgotten.

The music on Feral Grace sits between then and now. A bridge between memory and the present day. A last spell cast before those memories fade and the fingerprints disappear.

Who will know we were here at all? Perhaps only a distant echo left behind in our Feral Grace.