I can live with Xmas; in fact I actually find it quite tolerable....if whoever it is I'm staying with (usually a relative) understands, and they do, that this brooding, Capricorn Goat needs time to himself, or he'll start butting heads.

Time in this context translates into space, which, in it's turn, means I like to roam and to think.

Dorchester, where I stayed this Xmas, met all of my needs and more. On the town's outskirts is the aloof, dominating, yet magnificent Maiden Castle. An enormous, prehistoric hill fort, with some of the steepest ramparts I've seen anywhere, but more remarkable given their antiquity.

I was there with several relatives late on the afternoon of Xmas day, which was certainly, the best time to experience it's moody grandeur, silhouetted as it was against a lowering, cloudy, inky black sky.

Windswept and away from Dorchester, not like a cast out orphan, but almost an occult presence instead. Simply biding it's time, waiting.

Such a ruminating landscape, mysterious, full of hidden energies, with more than something of the night about it.

I was, and remain, transfixed by it.