'Come
here, Jude, and you, Charlie. No you
can’t go to the park, it’s too wet.’
I had stumbled on a middle-class, horse-loving, bridge-playing mother and toddler group. That was enough to raise my hackles for a good half-hour. I had fetched up in Stenton for some peace and quiet, and Jude and Charlie’s mother certainly wasn’t quiet. Luckily, the group was breaking up and the mothers were all driving away in their very expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Despite this being early June, this was as gloomy a day as any in November. A great sponge of cloud hung dangerously over my head, threatening at any minute to disgorge its contents down the back of my neck. I had no umbrella, no raincoat, no external protection of any sort. At least it was quite mild.
I looked around the churchyard. A builder was pointing the exterior wall to keep the occupants of the graves safe from cattle and sheep.
Some of the graves were very old indeed. I was moved by one little urn which read ‘Maisie Day, died 1945, aged 3 years 6 months’. Someone, a relative perhaps, had placed a couple of fresh flowers in the urn – one, a pink carnation, was broken and leaning at a crazy angle. I wondered who had done this, for the girl’s mother must be about 90 and be long dead herself – perhaps a sister still had fond memories of the little girl who died so tragically all those years ago. For poor little Maisie Day, there was no gravestone, just a tiny urn with a couple of desultory flowers sticking out of it to remember her by.
The tower of the original sixteenth-century church was turned into a doocot in the 19th century, when the new miniature gothic church was built, so that the villagers could have fresh meat through the winter. Not for the first time, I felt revulsion at the thought of people eating dirty, scrofulous, stupid pigeons.
Yards of bunting and several Union flags fluttered bravely in the rain-laden breeze, put up for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, now ended. I wondered who had the responsibility of taking them down. I presumed it to be the community council, the minutes of whose last meeting were displayed in the communal notice-board on the western green. I read them, and they were full of the typical fussy and absolutely inconsequential nonsense that occurs whenever a caucus of people forms a committee to deal with anything.
The community notice-board is located near the Tron, where the farmers used to meet, buy and sell sheep, and trade in wool 150 years ago. The ancient scales for weighing the sheep and the wool still stand in their original position, looking for all the world like a gibbet for midgets. Nowadays, the village is presumably populated by posh rich people playing at being country gentlefolk and engaging in mother and toddler groups. They have managed to persuade the Council to build them a Rolls-Royce of a playground for very few children, whilst the tarmac tennis courts in Haddington resemble a ‘C’ road in Albania.
For once, in leaving a quiet, picturesque little village adorned with a bucketload of flowers and awash with the sweet scents of honeysuckle and wallflower, I was quite cross.
I had stumbled on a middle-class, horse-loving, bridge-playing mother and toddler group. That was enough to raise my hackles for a good half-hour. I had fetched up in Stenton for some peace and quiet, and Jude and Charlie’s mother certainly wasn’t quiet. Luckily, the group was breaking up and the mothers were all driving away in their very expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Despite this being early June, this was as gloomy a day as any in November. A great sponge of cloud hung dangerously over my head, threatening at any minute to disgorge its contents down the back of my neck. I had no umbrella, no raincoat, no external protection of any sort. At least it was quite mild.
I looked around the churchyard. A builder was pointing the exterior wall to keep the occupants of the graves safe from cattle and sheep.
Some of the graves were very old indeed. I was moved by one little urn which read ‘Maisie Day, died 1945, aged 3 years 6 months’. Someone, a relative perhaps, had placed a couple of fresh flowers in the urn – one, a pink carnation, was broken and leaning at a crazy angle. I wondered who had done this, for the girl’s mother must be about 90 and be long dead herself – perhaps a sister still had fond memories of the little girl who died so tragically all those years ago. For poor little Maisie Day, there was no gravestone, just a tiny urn with a couple of desultory flowers sticking out of it to remember her by.
The tower of the original sixteenth-century church was turned into a doocot in the 19th century, when the new miniature gothic church was built, so that the villagers could have fresh meat through the winter. Not for the first time, I felt revulsion at the thought of people eating dirty, scrofulous, stupid pigeons.
Yards of bunting and several Union flags fluttered bravely in the rain-laden breeze, put up for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, now ended. I wondered who had the responsibility of taking them down. I presumed it to be the community council, the minutes of whose last meeting were displayed in the communal notice-board on the western green. I read them, and they were full of the typical fussy and absolutely inconsequential nonsense that occurs whenever a caucus of people forms a committee to deal with anything.
The community notice-board is located near the Tron, where the farmers used to meet, buy and sell sheep, and trade in wool 150 years ago. The ancient scales for weighing the sheep and the wool still stand in their original position, looking for all the world like a gibbet for midgets. Nowadays, the village is presumably populated by posh rich people playing at being country gentlefolk and engaging in mother and toddler groups. They have managed to persuade the Council to build them a Rolls-Royce of a playground for very few children, whilst the tarmac tennis courts in Haddington resemble a ‘C’ road in Albania.
For once, in leaving a quiet, picturesque little village adorned with a bucketload of flowers and awash with the sweet scents of honeysuckle and wallflower, I was quite cross.
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