Palmer's Pages

The rain hammers at the tin roof as we begin to write, a shattering that eclipses the sound of distant
thunder. It is three months or so now since we set foot on the American continent. No storm that day, but the heat-blast familiar to those who’ve holidayed in warmer climes, that dry shroud of space that envelopes you, was the greeting we received immediately through the aeroplane door. But there is something more that affronts your senses when you first land here; nothing tangible… but what might be best called ‘activity’; a chaos, a vibrancy, that foreign phenomena that we expect exists in far-flung regions, usually because we have been told stories of them around a fire, or read about them in dusty books as a child, and then adventurously dreamt of them in winter’s darkest days.

This is a land that hosted the construction of dazzling royal cities, fell in and out of favour with the gods, saw bloodshed, politics, and innovation; a land of exploitation, of piracy, the periphery of an empire and a reflection of its broadest, most interconnected, dynamics; a modern nation, fighting for unity in the face of external disapproval, struggling to bring its constituent parts into one whole, celebrating and capitalising on the diversity held within.

It seems in one sense genuinely new, a society with a flair of youth recognisable even in the smiles of
the elderly lining the streets, the glimmer of opportunity never far away; and simultaneously ancient,
a land of mystery, of discoveries lying in wait, revealing secrets that transcend the time and place to
which they pertain.

Later, the weather will reinvent itself, and the day will begin. Countless birds will sing in the canopy, just metres from our window, their colours brilliant in the day’s splendour. People will venture onto the roads again, the market, park, and cafes will be flooded with languages that have wound their varied ways through history, finding themselves spoken side-by-side as conversation begins. The sea, churned to small white horses in the morning’s wind, will return to transparent stillness, and fish will once again be visible between the surface and the bed.

Whilst we explore this fascinating country, we will endeavour to send our insights back to the Chew
Valley. The themes will be based on our experiences, as broad as they might be, following no principle of selection but for the fact that they interest us; it is our hope that, in doing this, we may also pique the interest, or offer some small entertainment, to the people of Chew Chats.