12 APRIL 1986, Page 34

Shap

The name confronts you a wind with a wet slap in it leathering the fell, flapping black oil-skins, spitting at squinting eyes. Ewes bunch at the wall, the collie slinks low, scuds between gusts, blown by the skirling whistle.

Two crows are blots on fence posts. On barbed wire, clots and wisps of coarse wool.

White plumes torn from the quarry. Fieldfares shucked from a thorn tree, nowhere to settle.

The buzzer blares. The dull boom. A wind with a clap of thunder in it, stamping its boot on Shap Fell.

Mick North