Despair, hope, etc.

The cold northerly wind whistles through the Village, scattering leaves hither and thither, like so many broken dreams.

In the village pub, a lone patron hunches over the remnants of a beer that has long warmed in his hand.

The village shop is closed, as it is closed on every Wednesday at this time of the year. Business is not what is used to be. Up the stairs, the shopkeeper sobs quietly into her Tesco Value porridge, and wonders what will happen to her once the shutters come down, for the final time.

The bowls club is silent, (except for the distant howls of a 75 year-old grandma being tag-teamed by a roaming pair of itinerant fencers, down for the weekend from Glasgow, but that is not the point of this story). The turf is frozen over. Summer is a distant memory, as far away as the bright lights of London are from this dour, terminally ill place. The remnants of a society long cast-adrift from the outside world huddle inside their faux-period cottages, heating one room at a time. This is how the Eskimos feel, looking out from their igloos over miles and miles of cold, unrelenting bleakness.

Here comes the man now, shuffling, hunched-over, up the hill from his house. Face buried inside his coat, against the sub-zero temperatures that have befallen this outcast community. Who is this man? What is he doing, out alone, struggling up the road on this wretched day? He stumbles towards the village pub, almost falls through the door, and shakes off his dreary garb.

It is him.

The bartender wakes from his half-sleep, face brightening like the dawn of a summer's day. Legend has arrived in his pub, and he feels proud.

It is The Author, (from down the hill).

The man who has shown that something good can come from this desolate wilderness. That there is hope! Yes, hope! There is hope for us all. For if one man can become a published author, then perhaps we can all fulfill our dreams, our loves, our deepest longings. A shout goes up from the figure in the corner, a mangled kind of "hooray"! The barman turns on the jukebox, and from across the village they come, to wallow in the pool of brilliance that emanates from this man. In the village shop, the shopkeeper removes the shotgun from her mouth and turns toward the sounds of the gathering. She wipes a tear from her eye, and knows that everything, everything, everything will be OK.

The party will last long into the night. The wine will flow, the people will laugh and when it ends, they will embrace, and they will look into each other's eyes and say, yes, this is a good life, this is worth living, for the small moments, if nothing else. When they wake in the morning, they will smile and go about their business, refreshed, with a spring in their step, and a reserve of joy in their hearts.

The Author returns to his cottage, kisses his family as they lay sleeping, and sits, thinking.