If I could erase the past, I’d be left with a road in Wiltshire allowing cars to pass the wheat-fields without going underground. I could carry away my horse manure unafraid of outraging tourists with the smell. I could write it all down, and re-write and re-write ad nauseam. I could re-visit Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and give it a new ending. I could give the Romans something else to wonder about. I could give a new feeling to ancient stone. I could stop worrying about the back pain so many people must have suffered lugging it. ‘I said bring me another drink!’ Silence. ‘Another drink to help my writing!’ Silence. ‘There was a time when you’d have been sacrificed to the sun!’ The silence of centuries and millennia….
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