Stories from England's Northern Edge - July, 2026 Submissions
Fireweed
Sarah Kirwan
Sarah is a writer and founder of The Author Bridge, a marketing consultancy designed to help authors improve their visibility. She writes nature inspired poetry and nonfiction and regularly collaborates with other creatives, including a textile artist and caligrapher. She is as yet unpublished and is currently working on her second novel.
About the inspiration for this essay, Sarah says, 'The starting point for this piece was a plant that I became fascinated by during a period when my life was changing. In a wider sense it's about celebrating nature's resilience, its magical powers of regeneration, and how as humans, we can find comfort in nature.'
Fireweed
In personal terms, last summer marked an ending and the start of a new beginning.
Endings are often difficult, but this one felt particularly so. I had been co-leading a challenging investigation into widespread historic physical and sexual abuse which had ended rather abruptly, in a way that felt rushed and untidy. When the job finished, I worried about whether I had done justice to the victims of abuse, resentful that we had not been given more time. Those feelings followed me around, like shadows, long after the investigation had finished.
Finishing that particular role also signalled a period of massive change. For months, I had known that after thirty-odd years as an investigator, it was time for something different, something more creative. What I hadn't counted on was how deep the roots of that identity ran, how disorientating it would be to reimagine myself, and how unsettling the space between those two worlds would feel.
I joined the police at 21. Investigation was all I had ever known. Friends and ex-colleagues asked me what I was going to do next; many assumed I would fall back into a similar role, that the attraction of doing what I did was somehow magnetic and I would be unable to resist. Actually, the opposite was true. Jobs roles that sounded on paper as if they could have been written for me, now turned my stomach.
And so, the summer stretched ahead of me. The thought of several months off work was liberating; I could relax, enjoy this great gift of time. This newfound freedom would surely bring about a great epiphany about what I would do next. I was lucky to be able to take time off and this thought echoed through my days. While other people were at work, I was swimming in a local lake, sharing the tranquility with the ducks and dragonflies, or sitting sketching an ancient yew tree, contemplating the trunk with its deep cavities which made it appear angry, with a mouth that could devour you.
In other moments I felt adrift and untethered. If I wasn’t an investigator anymore then who was I actually? If you subtracted the work part of me from my identity, then what did that leave? Like conjoined twins, the job was so deeply intertwined with my sense of self it seemed impossible to separate it from me.
The uncertainty of it all was overwhelming, and at times crippling. The simplest of everyday decisions suddenly became momentous – what to feed my family for dinner, the sequencing of day-to-day chores, responding to messages and emails. And then there was guilt. I was so used to earning and providing for my family. Suddenly I wasn’t contributing anything, financially at least. On a rational level, it was easy to dismiss this, after all, I had worked consistently for over 30 years and was clearly due a break, but on an emotional level, it began to make me feel diminished and chipped away at my self-esteem.
A trip away to see a good friend in Berwick at the beginning of August promised to be a much needed break. As we drove down country lanes towards the Cheviot mountains, wagtails diving across our path, I thought how much I missed the feeling of expansion that comes from being surrounded by open space.
It was midsummer, we had just passed Lammas, and everything in nature felt abundantly alive and at its peak. Even the land itself seemed to say, look here I am, fully present, taking up all this space, unapologetically. I admired the quiet defiance of the sheep, sprawled languidly in pockets across the road, indifferent to human traffic and entirely unwilling to be disturbed.
As we drove along the twisty, turny country lanes, something kept waving at us from the side of the road. A tall, spiky explosion of mauve and heather flowers, a plant that was obviously thriving, because it was everywhere, lining all of the grass verges in sight.
The image of it stuck with me, lodging somewhere in my subconscious. A few days later I went walking along the coastal path, no doubt thinking about the likelihood of seeing dolphins as the wind whipped off the sea. But it was the spiky plant that grabbed my attention there on the path, made me pause, take out my phone, curious to find a name for it. It was Rosebay Willowherb (chamerion angustifolium), often referred to as Fireweed, because it grows in places severely damaged by fire.
On my way home from Berwick, as we hurtled through the outskirts of London, I was feeling that pang of sadness you get after spending time with good friends in a nourishing environment. I was already sliding back into the doing mindset, worrying about what was coming next and what I was going to do for work. The landscape was bleeding colour now and all the buildings seemed squeezed together, unable to breathe. As we drew closer to London, I started bracing myself for the rush hour commute home.
Staring out the window, not really focusing on anything, a flash of pink caught my eye. In the waste ground next to the train tracks, I saw it again; unexpectedly this time, those familiar pink spikes now guarding the rails, flourishing there on the sidelines. It felt synchronistic, a little magical even, and I thought about resilience, hopeful that I would be able to stand tall again too, even if I also needed to bend a little with the wind to do it.
A few weeks later, I delved deeper into the plant and began to understand why it had stayed with me. In Britain it became known as Bombweed after the Second World War, when it sprang from the charred remains of bomb sites. It was also one of the first plants to reappear on the slopes of Mount St. Helens after the eruption, its seeds germinated by the heat of the scorched earth. I began to think of it as the phoenix plant, amazed that something so vibrant could emerge from desolation and thrive where so little else would grow.
There was no Damascene epiphany for me that summer. The realisation arrived much more slowly than that. But fireweed left me with a new perspective: endings are not just empty spaces. They are the scorched ground from which something new begins to grow.
The Raft
Linda S Gray
Linda Gray writes poems, stories, and plays. Her work has been performed as a member of the Duns Players theatre group. She is founder member of Word Weavers creative writing group who perform their work locally and at DunsPlayFest. She is also part of Berwick Writers' Forum performing at the Berwick Literary Festival. Her work has been included in several anthologies.
Linda says of her short story, 'This is a vintage coming of age story, set in the early 60s. It is based on my memories of growing up in a coastal town. ‘I do like to be beside the seaside', and most of the many places I have lived were by the sea.'
The Raft
Racing through the back alleys to Beach Street, the girl avoids crashing into the groups of children and adults walking to and from the beach along the melting tarmac road, jostling through the crowds as they climb the hill and disperse on to the Beach Promenade. Briskly walking in the shimmering sun she finds her favourite spot by the Raft.
The Raft is a square box, 3 by 3 metres wide and 2 metres high, made of thick planks of marine timber. Underneath, six large tin drums are strapped together to keep it afloat. Strong hessian matting is attached to the top, and thick ropes crisscrossed around the sides enable swimmers to hang on. It’s a great attraction.
Young men and boys test their bravery by crowding on the Raft and hanging on the sides, the ones on top, running from side to side, rocking the large wooden box until it almost overturns, then diving into the water; others on the sides, hang on as long as they dare, then dive back to avoid the raft as it slaps back on to the grey, green sea.
Girls and young women lie on brightly coloured towels on ridges of small brown and black pebbles, or, if they are lucky, on flat patches of damp sand. They whisper, giggling, watching the boys and young men. The males talk in low voices whilst they lay belly down, cheeks on their hands, conspiratorially nodding their heads towards the females.
Carol, putting a hand across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, spots her gang – well not really her gang. Today she is spending time with ‘those lads,’ as her father calls them, a group of boys who live off her alley and who she has played with all through her childhood, until they left primary school and went to secondary school. They are Jimmy Simpson or Sambo, with a constant smile on his face; Ricky Stillwell, a goofy teethed, dribbly boy; Roy Cook; smelly Ronnie Atkinson, the brunt of many cruel tricks and jokes; and Chas Norton, the baddest of bad boys who she secretly thought she loved. They were a little older than her, teenagers, but they like her because she is clever, funny, and as brave as any of them.
Carol runs down to where they stand, a quick greeting, clothes off – swimming costume underneath. She trots to the water’s edge over the hard pebbles wearing her trusty yellowing white plastic sandals. The sandals were not just beach wear, but school wear, and play wear; she wears them from early spring with socks and in the summer on her squelching, slippery bare feet. Her younger sisters also wear them, at the cost of only a few shillings a pair, they are their only footwear until autumn – if the sandals survive. In the winter they wear hand-me-down boots and shoes.
Wading in, the sea is cold and as Carol looks down into the cloudy grey water, she sees tea leaves and small pieces of wet paper floating. Moving out deeper she clasps her arms around her breasts with her hands under her armpits. Her swimming costume was becoming very tight across her developing bust and the material, ruished with thin elastic to create little bubbles, is stretched flat over her torso, many of the elastic threads broken. Small holes had started to appear where the strained straps met the bodice of the costume.
She swims to the raft and hangs on the side for a while, then clambering to the top she waits for the raft to tilt up on the side where she stands, her legs astride for balance, ready to dive quickly. She dives avoiding others in the air and the water. Swimming back to the raft, hanging on again she watches the thrashing and splashing of nearby swimmers and then looks for her gang on the seashore.
The lads are making their way slowly down to the water, Chas carrying a large beach ball. Once in, they begin to thump it towards each other, making spectacular saves to catch the ball, diving under the water, and exploding through the surface. She swims to them and joins in. After a while, exhausted with red eyes, faces covered with clinging strands of hair, they make their way up the beach, lowering themselves onto the hot pebbles and drying off their hair, faces, and shoulders.
The boys arrange their towels on the pebbles and lay down to catch the sun. Carol sits drying her long hair on a ridge of pebbles and seaweed, her legs bent with feet apart, toes wriggling in a small patch of sand. After a while Sambo and Chas turn over onto their stomachs and begin to whisper and snigger. The others move up close and bend their heads together to whisper. They sometimes do this, and Carol just ignores them. She looks out to sea. Their voices retreat as she dreamily enjoys the rays of the sun and gently rubs her hair with a thin towel.
“Carol?” queries Chas.
“Yeh?” Her attention wanders back, her eyes settling on his handsome freckled face.
“I think you should get a haircut, it's a mess,” he says, his eyes laughing, the others gorrrph and snigger, covering their red faces with the corners of their towels.
“Wot!” She explodes angrily, they never commented on her appearance, they knew how quick and cruel her retort would be – but it was Chas, and his opinion of her, especially her appearance, mattered.
“It’s too long.”
The others collapse laughing but Smelly Atkinson looks strange and says loudly
“Don’t….”
“Don’t worry I won't, I don’t give a bugger what you think of my hair.”
Red faced Carol jumps up and walks straight into the sea. Wading out, her shoulders jerking from side to side, she stops and floats on top of the water, confused, and hurt, her arms outstretched, staring up at the sun, tears pricking her eyes.
What do I care, she thinks, her mouth pursed in anger, summer holidays will be over soon, I’ll go to Wheatley Grammar and will probably never see them again.
That thought did not console her; she whimpered aloud at the prospect of losing their companionship.
She swims back to shallower water, and wades further along the beach out of sight, occasionally looking in the group’s direction, hoping they would leave. After a while she watches them pick up their damp clothes and towels and stand looking out to sea. She moves quickly behind a couple on a Lilo, so the lads cannot see her, but she can see them. They stand talking and looking around. Ronnie runs down to the water’s edge, but they call him back and slowly make their way up to the Beach Promenade.
Later, the beach becomes desolate after a squally wet breeze comes through, rippling the water and scattering the sun worshippers. The raft, rocking from side to side, is empty. Carol swims to it, pulls herself up, clambers onto the top and sits on the edge. The wind whips up, the side she is sitting on rises quickly rolling her back, one leg either side of her head. She looks through her legs to see if the rearing side is falling and catches sight of a tuft of golden hair between her legs. She rolls forward with the momentum of the raft and holds onto the rope matting to steady herself. Turning her body away from the beach she looks down between her legs at a clump of pubic hair that had escaped through a hole in the crotch of her costume, she sobs and feels sick. Hanging onto the top of the raft staring out to sea, trying not to think, she blanks her mind, freezing the moment but groans aloud as the sniggering and leering faces push their way into her consciousness.
Gulls are flashing through the air crying with excitement as the mood of the sea changes. The waves surge and froth, and, in a periwinkle blue sky, huge grey and white clouds rear across the sun. Distracted and disorientated Carol rolls onto her back with the movement of the raft as it rocks from side to side, the rough matting burns her arms as she tries to find the ropes to hold on. Slowly as one side rises like the bough of a sinking ship and she rolls, slipping over the edge and towards the water, catching her foot where the ropes cross on the sides of the rolling wooden box.
The Raft levels and then begins to rise on her side, while she hangs upside down by one leg looking down at the white surging mass, waiting for the moment when her side of the Raft would crash down, deep into the water. She tries to lift her head and shoulders higher to avoid the imminent crash and her foot slips out of the sandal, she falls into the choppy, grey-green water. Intuitively, under the waves, she propels herself away from the Raft and hears the slap as it hits the water. Surfacing she expects to see her sandal caught between the Raft’s ropes, but it has followed her into the churning sea. The Raft is rocking faster now in the stiffening breeze, and she knows it is unsafe to dive under it to retrieve the sandal.
Carol also knows she will not have any shoes to wear to school the next day, and if she tells the truth about how she lost her sandal, there would be hell to pay from her mother. She remains in the same spot for what seems a long time, kicking her feet and waving her hands in the water to stay afloat, trying to decide what to do. Should she risk it?
She looks back at the raft and then up into the sky, distracted by the gulls turning above her, filling the air with warning screams and rebukes! After a while she turns and swims to the shore. Collecting her clothes and towel, she stumbles up towards the beach promenade to the public toilets to dress.
Beachy, the local seashore scavenger and hermit stares down at her as she hobbles up the ramp. In his voluminous mac and tar encrusted boots, with plastic bags hanging from each arm full of his treasures, and bits of wood strapped to his back, he looks enormous, but she knew, he was as skinny as a rake.
“Lost yers sandal?”
Carol nodded.
“Tide goes out tonight. I’ll get it, sea often gives back. Hide it in breaker wi’ ‘ole over there,” he nodded at the wooden breaker.
“Thanks” she said following his gaze. She makes to leave.
“WAIT!” he shouts.
Carol jumps out of her skin and watches while he drops a bag to the ground and scrabbles through it. Grabbing her ankle, he places a pair of pristine white plimsols beside her bare foot.
“Left on beach. Holidaymakers, money to burn. Bit big. Bit o’ paper in toe, yers gro’ into em”
“And out of them” she beamed.