October 29, 2008	Wednesday	Shawwal 29, 1429

Archives Write to Mr. Irfan Husain

As a rationalist, I have never believed in ghosts, but a couple of recent incidents have forced me to reconsider my views. After spending the last weekend at Kim’s lovely Net House on the outskirts of Hay-on-Wye, we went off to Bala in Wales where we had borrowed a remote cottage from Tom Stacy. Tom is a writer and publisher, and is a very old friend. He is also one of the hardiest men I know, going off to swim in the Serpentine lake on winter mornings.

His cottage was built in the 17th century, but has circular stones in its foundations that were cut some three thousand years ago. Nearby is an old Roman road that the legions used to fight their way into the Llewyn Peninsula. Going up the drive, our car got stuck in the mud that had been caused by days of rain. But we forgot about this once the log fire was roaring in the huge fireplace. The walls are a yard thick, and the cottage gets very cold. Tom has a Spartan lifestyle, and this is reflected in his cottage that would not be awarded any stars for luxury.

As we settled down, the lady wife began looking for her book. She had been reading Patrick French’s recent biography of V.S. Naipaul, and although all three of us hunted for it, we just could not find it. As this is a fairly hefty tome, we could not have overlooked it, and I was sure I had carried it out of the car. After an hour or so, I went to the ground-floor loo, and there was the book, propped up against the floor next to the toilet door. It was in such an obvious place that we could not possibly have overlooked it.

Throughout the evening, Kim’s dog Puppy kept staring towards one corner of the living room, something she doesn’t do normally. After dinner, we went off to bed. As I read in bed, I heard a soft thud of something falling nearby. I looked around, and there was the case of my reading glasses on the floor. This object had been on the bedside table, and I had not moved, so there was no logical reason for it to have fallen. Odd, I thought.

The next morning, we went off to explore the Llewyn Peninsula, a place the lady wife and I had spent a few weeks in over the years. It’s wild, beautiful countryside, with ancient churches and steep hills covered with heather. While there are very few people, thousands of sheep and cattle graze on the hillsides and in pastures. You are never far from the sea, and we had a long walk on the beach where Puppy and our Puffin raced around, delighted to be in the open.

The next day, it was grey and wet, and we decided not to spend time driving up to Snowdonia, the highest mountain in Wales. Instead we went to a valley in Powys where there is an eighth century church. Legend has it that the local prince was hunting a hare that took refuge behind a girl who was praying in a grove. When a huntsman raised his bugle to alert the others, he found he could not blow it. The prince was so impressed by the girl’s piety that he gave her the valley. Here, she built the church that stands to this day, while her bones rest in a tomb in the ancient building.

That evening we returned to Tom’s place for the night. When we were there a day earlier, Kim and the lady wife had been discussing the absence of any tea towels in the kitchen. This made the task of drying the washed dishes difficult, but they put it down to Tom’s eccentric ways. When we entered the kitchen, there was a stack of these towels sitting on the table where we had eaten two meals without seeing them. While all these odd, trite incidents happened around us, none of us sensed any malice. Later, when she rang Tom to thank him, the lady wife told him about our experience, and asked him if he had felt anything over the years. He laughed, and said in his usual elliptical way that the cottage was located on a very old site where there had been continuous human habitation for three thousand years. In any case, he had become used to whatever presence there was in the cottage, and it had become accustomed to him.

Talking of ghosts (not that I believe in them!), there is a major exhibition of the works of Francis Bacon on at the Tate Britain. Bacon was one of the most influential painters of the last century, and the show was packed. His figures and faces have a haunted, tortured expression that were far more disturbing than any Welsh spirits. Large canvases with convoluted figures and contorted faces dominated the walls. Critics have seen in them the alienation and agony of individuals coping in a disorienting world, bereft of the crutches of faith. The loneliness and angst of modern life haunts Bacon’s subjects as he distorts their faces into soundless screams, their mouths gaping in pain and terror. After an hour of this horror show, give me ghosts any time…

Luckily, there was some light relief as we emerged into the main passage of the Tate. An artist called Martin Creed had a live happening going on that consisted of a runner hurtling down the length of the hallway at full tilt every thirty seconds. So as you watched, young men and women in shorts, T-shirts and joggers would charge down the sixty-metre length of the space “as if their lives depended on it”, according to the panel on the wall. Clearly, after a few sprints, boredom reduced the speed of the participants. But it was fun, nevertheless, especially after the unrelieved bleakness of the Bacon show.

Finally, news from the ever-active atheists in the UK: with support from Richard Dawkins, they have collected a hundred thousand pounds for placing a message on London buses that will read: “God probably does not exist. So stop worrying and enjoy life.”