Chapter 23: Ye Calm After Ye Ftorm. It's approaching 6pm on May 7th 2019 and Rich is already regretting that he didn't record his last stone clearing jaunt where the Stone Gods showed their displeasure or appreciation (it's so hard to interpret) of his work by sending a storm of fire and ice to punish or reward him. He also chats about how he is prepared to lose one eye (but no more than that) in the quest to achieve is goal and how he hopes he can die out on the field. Has he run out of thing to say about stone clearing? Would people still listen if this was just the sound of a man stone clearing and not commenting about any of it? Why are all the other dog walkers involved in sexual trysts whilst he has to weave crops together to find love? How much more rambling will this become as Herring becomes older, and at what point will you decide it's inappropriate to carry on listening to the disintegration of a once cogent mind? But is not that very mental decay the artistic point of this whole endeavour? The immutable though ironically mute stones remaining unchanged as all around them atrophies? Who knows? Eventually there is some good advice about dealing with nettles. So worth hanging in through the bleak middle section.

Oh and did I mention that there is now an unofficial stone clearing website? It's here: https://www.stoneclearing.com/. Richard Herring is not responsible for the content of this site. Or really anything that he does from this point onwards. But this site is by some anonymous stranger, hopefully not Bryan Bramble.