The Bag Man / The Curious Traveller

Twin stories, born from one childhood reality mixed with a vivid imagination...

They originally came out curiously entwined but never quite merged into a cohesive tale.  I had to carefully pick out the bits that worked best for each story.  Gradually like Siamese Twins they were separated and thankfully both have survived.

The Bag Man

Round our way, down winding country roads laced with cow parsley and yellow fields, walks a mysterious man who no-one really knows.  We see him most days from car windows, a blurred image of man and bags, coat and hair, hidden face and bowed back.  We call him The Bag Man and we fear him, just a little...

Sometimes a stranger becomes part of family mythology and is named by children with little awareness of common usage and hefty dictionaries.  So let it be said before we begin that in this story a ‘bag man’ is much the same as a ‘bag lady’ and let us disregard all other meanings.

So the Bag Man walks the country roads up and down, carrying his bags up and down. Parents scare their children with stories that the Bag Man will get them if they don't behave or go to bed on time.  Adults pass him in the car at speed in case he gets home before them.  Especially when they are alone they find they fear him more than their children do.  For children are curious and will tag along behind him, despite their parents warnings.

Yet have they ever thought on and pondered upon a life such as his?  We had questions galore to ask him if only our parents would slow down and stop.  Where is he going? Where is he from?  Does he have a house to live in and what is in his many bags?  Questions never to be answered, for now we are as fearful as our parents had been.

Now as I recall my childhood I speculate anew on the mystery that was the Bag Man.  With the burdens of adult life upon my shoulders I wonder whether he was as free as he seemed or was he tied to the roadside, slave to the journey, the travail of the winding way.  Did he feel boundless and more alive than we do? I imagine stories for him as I did when young, but instead of great adventures and treasure, they are of dark faeries and lost loves.


In my mind’s eye I see that many, many years ago he went to market to buy groceries.  A young man he was with jaunty step and clear eye, meeting his lady-love for a light lunch of oysters and pearls.  He left her with promises and intensions to return upon the Sunday when both were to be wed. He turned with a wave and set off home, his bags full to the brim with ingredients for cold pottage and syllabub, grate pyes and plump pastries for the wedding feast.  Whereupon he unwittingly trod inside a faery ring and begun the wandering way in that hidden realm.

We could not know what torment he suffered, for he looked wild and mad and out of his wits to our human sight.  Those taunting sprites and glamoured maidens tore at his hair and pinched at his skin.  They danced with him by night and hectored him by day; much cruel sport was made of him.  The wind was always against him and the sun burned his back, the roadside held him as the way stretched and blurred and home was always just around the corner.

So hundreds of years fell away, never to be recalled, and when the Bag Man steps from the verge to the path, released from their time to our time, he is far older than he knew and his lady-love is long, long gone.  His bags are full of dust and hunger and loss and grief, those pyes and pastries never made nor tasted.

Yet still we see him walking along the verge, the Bag Man plodding the roadside, seen but briefly as we rush by pursuing our busy lives.

By Amber Caspian, 26 May 2011

What is Home?

A couple of days ago I was unexpectedly served notice on my flat.  I now feel an unsettling mixture of excitement as to the next part of my journey and acute grief at losing my home.

I moved here three and a half years ago after a particularly rough year of virtual homelessness.  A studio flat in a converted barn, it is spacious and light and perfect for painting in.  A miles walk across the fields from the nearest village it stands amongst fields and woods steeped in Norman and Saxon history.  A haven made of beams and branches that move with the wind and surrounding trees like a living breathing tree-house.  The wonderful sound of rain on the roof; the hoot of owls in the night and wood pigeons hoo-hooing by day; the smell of earth, leaf and fields of wheat, my senses singing now they are away from the city life I had known before.

Where will I go now? How do I survive leaving somewhere that feels so much a part of me?

It still seems strange that a year ago I spent most of the year travelling and away from home. I particularly remember feeling that home was people; I missed my niece, family and friends so much it hurt! I also carried my ‘home’ on my back, a turtle-shell full of my clothes and sleeping bag, a few books and journal, camera and toothbrush. Did I really need more than I could carry? But in the end I realised it was emotional baggage that I needed to shed, and perhaps a few books…

Since then I find I carry mainly colours within me, the amazing array of the Painted Desert, the subtle ones of a frozen Swedish lake, the vibrant golden beauty of Angkor Wat, along with the vastness of skies and of my love for the people in my life. All this doesn’t need packing or storing or clearing out. With this I can find and create a home again… perhaps an improved version that’s a little warmer in winter.

Goddess Cycle Poems

A number of years ago I celebrated the wheel of the year by writing poems about the Goddess as she changes with each festival. The idea was to have images to go with them; I have done a few but by no means all so they will appear as and when. These things cannot be forced!


I immersed myself in books on folklore, a huge passion of mine, but mainly tried to describe my own vision of her; brought to life as a tangible being who one could actually meet.  Describing Her through words She might speak when presiding over a village’s celebrations.  I also wanted to give a sense of the season, the changes She goes through, Her relationship with the God and all the themes that come from that, as well as the dark and the light aspects.


A couple of years later I did the same with the God, the same process of learning and envisioning.  I feel I did achieve what I set out to do at the time; in fact it proved to be a turning point for me in terms of my writing. Ten years on I probably would write very different poems, which is a very interesting thought!


Personally I don't believe that God/dess will manifest into physical form.  I see Her/Him as an essence, a metaphor, the feminine and the masculine principles that govern nature and us.  I believe in the God/dess within.

Cambridge Folk Festival

On Sunday, Lammas Eve, I went to the Cambridge Folk Festival for the first time.  Massively overcrowded in a very small space, something I’m not keen on, it was still a fun day involving lots of Pimm’s, cider and ale with of course a picnic!

My picnic

Interesting things I saw there, aside from bands, were this troupe of brightly coloured Molly Dancers known as Gog Magog Molly, named after some hills near Cambridge.  Molly dancing is a traditional East Anglian dance distinct from Morris Dancing, which died out in the 1930’s and was revived in the 1970’s.  No sticks or bells are involved but instead very different steps, brightly coloured costumes, painted faces and rebellious behaviour.  Associated with Plough Monday, the first after Epiphany, it involved the ploughboys touring around the village landowners offering dances in exchange for money, when they should have been starting work.  Anyone refusing had an unfortunate trick played on them, such as a large furrow ploughed into their lawn.  The disguises were needed as they hoped to still gain work with the landowners in the spring.

Gog Magog Molly Dancers

Molly Band

My favourite Molly

Also I loved these two giant foxes made out of willow that decorated the site...

Willow Fox Banjo Player

Willow Fox Fidder

...and this wonderful mannequin girl, don’t know who she is or where she’s from but would love to find out.

You never know what you will discover!

Goddess of Lammas