It was quite well known in the village that I kept a bearded dragon in the Valencia Barn<\/p>\n
During the colder months it would hibernate in the deep seas of straw that I had prepared<\/p>\n
This was unusual as bearded dragons tended to migrate to warmer countries as the months withdrew<\/p>\n
I had named the dragon Vienna Blue but did not disclose this to anybody for fear of ridicule<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The barn had been built over eighty years ago but had been badly damaged during the war<\/p>\n
My grandfather had helped to rebuild the barn with materials from the beach fortifications<\/p>\n
This gave the barn a sturdy appearance and I could still find traces of bullet holes in the deep concrete<\/p>\n
As a child this pleased me greatly but less so as I grew older and understood the carnage<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Quite frequently my wife and I would cycle to the beach and rest on the massive fortifications<\/p>\n
Above us the bearded dragons would drift on the sea winds unaware of the histories beneath their wings<\/p>\n
It was not uncommon to see the fragile ghosts of those who did not return even on the brightest of days<\/p>\n
This was something that we both got used to but could never ever fully accept<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was quite well known in the village that I kept a bearded dragon in the Valencia Barn During the colder months it would hibernate in the deep seas of straw that I had prepared This was unusual as bearded dragons tended to migrate to warmer countries as the months withdrew I had named the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}