BLUE-COLD TUESDAY

Standing there in the wind of that Tuesday morning, without so much as a sheep in sight, Irtons' centuries-old cross looked as abandoned as the landscape.

For over a thousand years it has kept its watch with few to ask why and just the wind for company. Later in the pub, people told us how our faces glowed from the wind's smart kiss but now, years later, I can't help wondering if there wasn't more to it than January's icy bite.

Is it fanciful to recall the words of St Paul in chapter 3 of second Corinthians, "and we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image we reflect"?

Fanciful? Surely not. And yet I cannot now recall either of us remembering those words then, or later. Perhaps we needed the years that have passed, with their joys and sorrows, their comfort and pain before Paul's words could cross the centuries and take hold. Does it matter that my companion of that January morning has long since left this life to enjoy the glory whose reflection I now try to imagine? Perhaps not. It just seems sad, that's all, especially as I am unlikely to visit Irton again. And in any case would it be the same? Would it repeat the near ecstasy of the memory or simply remind me of my own human frailty?

Irton cross has many companions scattered about these islands. Some I have visited much more often and photographed in greater detail, not least the famous Cross of Kells near my birthplace in Ireland. But for me Kells like others, now has too many neighbours; too many buildings, too much traffic and too many people. Irton, I think, will always have the edge, perhaps especially as the memory of it is now such a big part of it's very name, certainly for me. Ninth century Irton, silent about those who have come and gone during that time, content to leave its story to the wind