As a child I had a book called Early Morning Island it was written by R.M. Lockley the Naturalist about his daughters life on Skokholm a small island off the Pembrokeshire Coast . He took a lease of 21 years on the island in 1927 and lived there on and off for twelve years with his wife and daughter Anne . I adored this book perhaps because the child was called Anne but also because for me the island seemed to embody the idea of “a magical place” something that resonated with me as a little girl . I had a hazel wood that I used to go to and make moss gardens under the hazel trees …. “I went out into the Hazelwood because a fire was in my Head” (Yeats’ song of the wandering Aengus)
Alice Williams was the old wooden figurehead from the Alice Williams which was wrecked off the island , Anne goes one day to collect Bluebells and takes Alice the flowers and kisses her hard wooden cheeks
Now in my sixties it is still to that magical state that I need to return in order to make work and for me Pembrokeshire is a magical place and Kissing Alice Williams a metaphor for both my older and younger selves .