it was only a northern swan

It was my neighbour who suggested we go for a nice calming stroll around the lake at the local National Trust place but his contemplative conviviality was somewhat tempered by his complaining all the way round about the Trust's removal of the stepping stones near the tearoom; health and safety you see. My neighbour explained how when the Trust took over the estate in the nineteen eighties the old abbey actually still had a roof and all of it's windows but they were both stripped away lest a visitor trip over a fallen shingle and plunge through the stained glass. This was, he explained, the same time that the monks were sent away because they were a silent order so they refused to give anyone directions to the gift shop. This made me feel warm inside because you see it's only when you gain people's confidence that they share this kind of local knowledge.

We came across these little fellows by the water and as I wondered whether there was a really clever and original baby waterfowl inspired metaphor here if I could only see it they recognised the man who makes the pies for the farmers market and inexplicably leapt straight back into the water in a flash, and so the train of thought steamed off into the distance with my homesick thoughts still in the luggage rack, in coach B, over seat 42a, the one with the bit of old chewing gum stuck on the fold down drinks tray and the crumpled old Northern Echo with the crossword half completed stuffed behind it. Well, if you miss one there's always another along in a minute, metaphors that is, not trains. 'Fancy a brew Rilly?' asked a voice. It was my neighbour. 'Aye', I said, 'that would be super '.

husbands in the south

Yesterday I was coming back from having lunch with some Labour Party chums in the local market town. I was feeling rather down in the dumps, I must say. Nobody understands what a struggle it is to have a husband who spends some of the week in his office a few hours away down the motorway you know, leaving me alone to look after the children and the nanny, and on top of that champagne at lunchtime always makes me a little maudlin so I really needed cheering up. Then I noticed one of my neighbours across the street. She’s a bit of a local but we always seem to get on quite well nevertheless so I went over for a chat to try and raise my spirits. I struck up a conversation and asked what had brought her into town. ‘My husband has a tour in Kandahar coming up Rilly’, she said, ‘so he’s shopping for new boots’. 'A tour?’ I replied, ‘That sounds rather fun. Kandahar; that’s near Harrogate isn’t it?’ I asked. She looked rather concerned and not, and in my view I'm afraid, about my rather more serious worries. I supposed she must have been wondering whether her husband would finish tiling the bathroom before he went away or something, but really, it’s just just me-me-me with some people, sigh.

north and south

I knocked on the door. Footsteps were heard in the hallway and my neighbour opened the door. ‘Hello Rilly’ said my neighbour, ‘what’s the matter love?’ ‘I think I’ve run over a cow’, I told him. ‘Not a sacred one I hope’, he smiled. I lowered my gaze. I didn’t need to say more. ‘Fancy a brew?’ he asked, standing aside from the door. I went in. ‘Come on through’, he said. ‘I’ll put kettle on’. Just then the phone rang. My neighbour picked up the receiver. ‘What’s that?’ he asked the caller, ‘trouble at mill you say!?’ he repeated, grinning at me. I smiled embarrassedly. With a few more words he ended the call. ‘You mustn’t worry about those Londoners pet’, he assured me. ‘They’ve never heard of Galileo down there, still think the universe revolves around them’. 'Galileo?' I queried. 'Aye, Galileo' he said. 'Hmm, Galileo' I pondered. 'Rilly, let me go', he said, 'kettle's boiling', and I unhanded him so he could make the tea. I moved a little closer to the fire as my neighbour clanked mugs in the kitchen and with my damp feet starting to warm by the hearth I was sure I was feeling a tingly sensation I hadn’t felt for a long time; static, it must be, I thought to myself, bloody northerners and their synthetic carpets, and I wondered if my neighbour had any brandy in, sigh..

the wind

Well, considering the only view I’d had of the North before I was so involuntarily transplanted here was from films about people taking all their clothes off, at the drop of a hat, as it were, the weather in these distant latitudes has been most un-cinematically inclement lately. last week it was floods and then on Friday the wind, and, as my neighbour claims Letty can be seen saying through the cowboys, dust and wurlitzer, it’s been right proper drafty. even my husband has been affected by the weather and has spent most of the day clinging to the sofa repeating there's no place like home, there's no place like home. Actually, my neighbour told me recently I reminded him of Lillian Gish. I asked him if it was because we shared that rare quality of fragile resilience but he said it was because I was a rather melodramatic, wore silent film make up and seemed to think it was still the nineteen twenties. I ask you, do I come across as some monstrous caricature to you, Sigh...