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Number 5 on the all-time list from BBC Radio Scotland...
by Alastair Reid (b. 1926)
Scotland
It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet, when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels. Greenness entered the body. The grasses shivered with presences, and sunlight stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills. Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat, the woman from the fish-shop. ‘What a day it is!’ cried I, like a sunstruck madman. And what did she have to say for it? Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves and she spoke with their ancient misery: ‘We’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it.’