No.7 Forthill

The little girl spent a lot of time looking out of her window. It was hard not to when the window was so huge and oversized and took up almost a whole wall of her bedroom. Even when she was actively doing something else the view from the window was always there, just over her shoulder or just by her side, in her peripheral vision.

The back drop of the view was a little hill. The hill was smooth, covered in grass and topped by 4 trees. It wouldn’t be right to say the hill “loomed”, because it was a very small, pretty hill and not at all threatening, but the hill certainly seemed to try to “loom” and the little girl felt the presence. The hill was a constant companion.

Sometimes the little girl would climb to the top of the little hill and sit in the shade of the trees on the top. From there the little girl would look down at her odd shaped house and the window of her odd shaped room. The window didn’t look so oversized from there and nor did the hill seem so little either.

The hill was called “Forthill” but there was no fort on the top (and believe me, the little girl had looked!) She could only conclude that the fort had disappeared into time but the name had remained. She liked to imagine what the fort had been like, who might have built and lived in it, and who they were fortifying themselves from. The long lost presence of a fort went someway to explaining why the little hill tried so hard to “loom” over the townscape…it was obviously remembering it’s former fortifying purpose.