A Christmas Child

It is wet in Highland Perthshire. Carols are being sung in every church and hall, but the days simply rain and rain. Behind where I live here in this corner of inland Scotland the woods are full of deer. On the cold winter nights in previous years up to a hundred deer have come to sleep in among the birch trees on the frost nights. Even though I shouldn't have done so, I have gone out to feed them. They were so hungry they even took food right from my hand. My house is called Little Narnia: it is a magical location, and there is a path leading through a wicker gate at the back of the house up into the deeper woods. Somehow the wood is Narnia. I often think of that late at night: under cover of darkness the certainties of the world change and remoteness is restored to places that are nothing during hours of daylight. I know I would have loved this place as a child: I would have been fascinated by the night woods and the owl that calls and the deer gathering silently to sleep beyond the fence. A magic is restored, but most of all on the frost nights: it's harder to find make-believe in the rain.