I would not have thought I would have needed to say this. Once upon a time, there was an English mole. I say mole, I mean vole, or guilty black hole. Not so much a mole as a disaffected young teacher, or a sheaf of important papers, or a strategy session in the wine bar with Giles, or a traffic jam. Or a lie as big as a bus. A mole as in a foal, as in a dinner, when it’s wanted. A mole as a drink, when it’s needed. A mole as in a queue, for food? A mole of practical use, or pragmatic scruples and sharp manners. A mole what uses myth, like money, to store, in order, to never have to think of it. Mole as in wealth, as in forgetfulness. Mole as in memory, memory as confidence. Or the idea of an island which grew its own people. Or up to no good. No doubt. I say Mole, I mean Arthur. I mean Uther, Oswald, George. Love of country was her name. I have no love for this country, was her name. She almost certainly said she didn’t understand anything, names nor countries. She could see, and was hungry. I’d like to see you spit on your face, she said. He could not reconcile the deep appreciation, the lusty, unquenchable affection she felt for the landscape of this country with the political history and present of the place which he found so revolting. This mole was caught between this love and this inability to love, and felt they must reach around and become one. They must be the same thing. They smelt the same, if the mole was being honest. I say mole, I mean populace oblivious to propaganda, self-interest or personal gain, an animal made of millions, released from the dark tunnels of capitalism’s dying gasps. A mythical beast. A joke. Regret was her lightline. She would not ask, do I ask what my actions are asking for right now? For she was historical, in the tunnels, lightless with her line, a paw with a sore, holding a cage, with a budgie. Yellow in the dark. Animals too, moles digging coals, downing tools, hearing singing as warning, and not listening. The mole as the last night, not last night, and getting upset that the hole wasn’t looking at the mole, in the dark, when she couldn’t see his face but he could see hers. The mole had to look at where he thought her eyes were. Revolting is a strong word. I say mole, I mean National Trust, national freedom pass for the national bus, a proper hoo-ha, a national fuss. I say mole, I mean Sharpe, Sean Bean as Sharpe, I mean people are dying while you go full-bore Cockerhoop. I mean it wasn’t like that when I was around, when I was younger. I mean a certain kind of touch, of look. I mean a freedom pass. I mean blindness to the estate. I mean, have you been in prisons, lately? They don’t really. I mean you aren’t talking of who fixes what you’re using? I mean an acre of English ground, a sugarcoated Dacre homeward bound. I say mole I mean Yarl’s Wood and all who work there who will never get to any heaven English or heathen. I say mole. I mean a deliberate lie. I mean an act of aggression against the thing that sustains the world, ad infinitum. A Möbius strip of endless U-turns. You say mole, you mean if you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll turn for you. Turn over, their backs to the ground. So much back to the ground it undergrounds. U-turns under the earth. You say mole but the term is not applied to all talpids; e.g., desmans and shrew moles differ from the common definition of “mole.” He happened upon a postcard from her grandmother, and climbed into a gray watercolor and pencil forest, and felt in there, in the late-life, lonely work of a man gone to war and come back godly, a certain sort of English sanity. Faith. Totally mad, but beautifully truthful. She smelt it closer and heard it, ridiculous scripture. Three is the magic number. I say mole, I mean that rare thing, a true eccentric with a genuinely good heart. Kindness. Grace. I say mole but I mean pilgrim. He happens upon a feeling of pride and says out loud, I am where I am supposed to be. I am creating foreign englands to leave my own. I am creating land from sea. A mole as in earth on water, to dig, to live on it and make it better. He says you can read this anywhere, anywhere you want to read. A mole as in a memory, emailed. As is decent, constant, cancer or rain same complaint. As in deference, unpretentiousness. As in you wouldn’t want to see the old peoples voting history. As in when he was young, if you were to say one more thing to him, one more loose from your mouth, then he would’ve burst you, like a mole in a digger, and washed in your ashes and no one would’ve cared. Eccentric as in soldier, war as in mole. He realized he must eat it. All of it. The poisonous and the palatable. She was hungry, and only by eating a great many things would she start to understand this love that could encompass shame, and was no longer made of country lanes, trees, flowers and small fellow-mammals. I say mole I mean server. I mean brochure. I mean pixels. Not a mole, more of a wood, more of a community, more of a teenager alone in a room staring at a screen, more a meeting in a Little Chef, more a surveyor, or an elaborate scam coded into the way a digital advert works, or a pipe, or not a pipe. More of a nation, outside of papers, an anti-net where still no one will bat a lash. He is national enough to say, out loud, I am where it is. As in, a bit smaller, but still, impressive historically hmm? A skin disease as in moles are crawling all over me. A mole as in a confession, without any Catholics present. As in I need someone to hold me down. I’m pulling out my hair mole. As in I’d love you, but you’d tell everyone. You’d tell them of my brass. Of my salt in the earth, which poisons moles. A mole is a spy, is a green-leather seat in a chamber of bullshit. A mole is a sleep like baby logs. An apologies, a baby moles is a mole, we mean. The auld moldwarp. The new male moles are called “boars,” females are called “sows.” A group of moles is called a “labour.” If you look closely you’ll see the mole is charitable. I say mole I mean sure start. I mean good bloke doing his thing keeping his head down. I mean wonderful pretentious twat. Closely looked I was born riffraff, and I’ve grown old as the stuff. That’s what shouldn’t be allowed. You hear that. Let that be forbidden in the future. Man is born in order to think. Who is them? I don’t understand this thing. If I’m happy, mole is unhappy. If mole is happy, man is unhappy. Except he imagines he’ll be able to wriggle out of it. Less a mole than an intimate examination of the sore bit inside a person’s eyelid. I say mole, but I mean any child, any parent, any person in a position of responsibility or utter carelessness. I mean prisoner. I mean patient. I mean the architect of a lie and he or she who believes the falsity and suffers while the deceiver profits. Mole as in poor and getting poorer, the little animal who is rich, and gets richer. Mole mole, caught in a hole. One mole, two moles, three moles, four, try to shut us out, there’s a mole in the door. The mole folds into a shadow, of course, because he’s underfoot, where shadows start. “For treatment of warts and cysts on the throat for a man take a she-mole, & for a woman a he-mole & setting by a good fire let the party put the moles head in his mouth & biting it, sucke the blood out of the moles mouth as lively as it can for treatment of warts and cysts on the throat.” Prester John. Hermes Trismegistus. The Golden Legend. Whatever. Angels with eyes like abscesses. But that’s the only thing. The only noticeable visual impairment. All else is not noticeable, so I assume, looking over my shoulder, symmetrical. Mole as in English fact. As in how we keep changing, how we’ve always been like this. Mole as in you’ll thank me in the end. Lie Mole. Lay Mole. History mole. King mole’s vicious campaign against himself. Regret is not his guide line, backward through his history. Disease has never been a respecter of historical odds. I say mole I mean news. I think you have a fairly good sense of who the mole is. You’d say them. I mean us.