Driving North / Driving South: Reflections upon the Spatial/ Temporal Co-ordinates of 'Home'

Driving South this time -late July, 1999-I am struck by how arid it is, how yellow the wayside grass. It is not an especially dry year-we are still way off any talk of 'drought' -and yet, coming from the 'total' green of Scotland, it is one of the markers that tells me I have passed into a different country: a land whose very seasons bespeak a different time, a different space.