Last time. I’ll aim for his breadbasket
this go Carefully, carefully.
GOT HIM!
Mrs Bowen the Champion, she
should have said. Twice I’ve won now, I’m the Champion,
I’ve never won many things in my life, but I’m
the Champion here.
There it comes over me
again
faintness
won’t last
long
not long
It just takes
some time before you’re
back to yourself again.
Auntie Mary did leave me something in her will.
They were good like that, remembering. It was very
little. They didn’t used to give pensions to their
staff however long they’d been there, they left a
lump sum in their will, the sisters. Fat
comfort to some.
A little use to me now, I can buy myself the odd
Guinness if I can find anyone to go out for it for
me. They had their own
bread, we baked every other day. But no brewer,
though, they were teetotal, very strict. Not Chapel,
church, but very teetee just the same. They
knew the gardeners drank ale with their dinners,
but woe betide anyone who brought it into the
Hall! I did once, felt ever
so guilty. I was low at the time and I bought
myself a small bottle of gin from the Bear. Normally
I felt so safe in my little attic room, well,
it was not so little, it was a reasonable size,
but all the time I had that bottle in the room I
felt as though I were a criminal. My little
room. The washstand with the plain green jug
and bowl, the window, quite big really, looking
down on the lawns and across the bridge to the
warren. I had some happy hours there, it was not
all hardship. Most of the time I didn’t have to
share it, only if we had Company and they had
servants. My bed
along one side, and an old easy chair, the high-
backed sort with wings, donkeys’ years old, a
picture Miss Eirwen had painted herself, brown
lino on the floor. I was content — no, at the
time I hated every minute of being a servant,
only now does it seem
pleasant.
The lilac
curtains, my own flowery jerry under the bed,
but clothes behind the curtains in the alcove.
They may be like it still, the Hall is still there,
I should think, but now it is probably a guesthouse
or something like that, perhaps they’ve sold it to
build houses on, chopped down all those lovely
trees. Everything changes,
nothing gets better.
I was going
to read myself, but daren’t now she’s given Ivy
a taste of her tongue. But I’m
not going to watch this filth again, why she does
it baffles me. Surely she can’t think it stirs
us up?
Summer we would go down the
bothy, where the single gardeners lived, next to
the walled garden and the greenhouses. They’d grow
all sorts for the sisters there, figs and peaches
you didn’t get anywhere else in the county, or so
they said. A boilerhouse
in the basement of the bothy, coal down a chute,
the long winters. I can remember it exactly, why
can’t I remember what happened yesterday?
My friends would say I was forward,
just because I used to look men right in the eyes.
None of that shy retiring for me. That’s what men
and women’s eyes are for, I would say to them.
They knew what I meant, they would giggle.
Rabbits were common, we
had trout out of the stream, too, poached, the
sisters did not make a fuss about that sort of
thieving like some of the gentry around those parts.
Why trout were thought so special I could never
understand, anyone who’d had them as often as I
have would prefer a good fresh herring any day.
Listen to her!
No, doesn’t matter
~ ~ ~
George Hedbury age 89 marital status bachelor sight 10 % hearing 15 % touch 25 % taste 20 % smell 10 % movement 15 % CQ count 2 pathology contractures; incontinent; advanced inanition; chronic rheumatoid arthritis; Paget’s Disease; advanced senile depression; muscle atrophy; fibrositis; intermittent renal failure; among many others.
.
Lame
source
unfr
.
they’ll
for
why?
oughter
eh!
schools
.
consuls
how are you? in the
pink
straining
.
Cox’s Orange pippin!
No matter if the future’s dim
keep right on and suffer hymn
.
Work! work Fancy, aaah
crêpe paper, crêper crêpep crêper
crêp
crêper
crêper?
crêper!
.
crêper, yes
Stick she says? Eh?
crêper
glue little round
Sweeties are they?
.
glass
spitting spitting spitting
maybe, ah