Spread across the village green is the remains of a fearsome picnic: pigeon feathers. It was probably a fox. My thoughts fly to Ethelreda and her partner Ethelred. Whose feathers lie ravaged on the grass? Are the eggs safe in my garden under their canopy of spent roses?

I almost run through the house and into the back garden and search with my eyes for the sitting bird. And there she or he is, silent, immutable, regarding me with a bright eye. I am so relieved. The pigeons are still there and the egg is still safe, warm under feathered body.

Notes:

My pergola rose has a nursery name of “Ethel”, consequently we named our visiting pigeons who nest there Etheldreda and Ethelred.

Sitting writing in my hammock I look up to see a pigeon watching me from among the roses on the pergola. It would be a safe place to nest as the thorny sprays keep the cats away, if only the daft bird could build a decent nest. Unfortunately for some years the nest was so flimsy that the eggs and squabs simply fell through it onto the bricks below, which was distressing. This year, however there looks to be enough rose debris to keep the whole thing together. So, I nod at the pigeon and cross my fingers.

I planted this rose “Ethel”, in 2005 which makes it a bit over twenty years old. It is a fragrant rambler and clearly likes the garden as it has grown to an impressive 20 foot and flowers prolifically every year. Unlike other roses which are bred to flower repeatedly within one season, rambling roses have one show of blooms. For a few weeks during June and July, the wooden pergola frame is laden with a mass of pink clusters. The double blooms start off almost white, then a whole array of pink hues begins to develop, delicate like apple blossom, strengthening to a strong, almost virulent pink, which fades over time to a lilac.

Sometimes I make up bunches of roses to give to friends, or I sell them for charity. This year, however, I put them out on the pavement with a sign saying “Free” and just gave them away. I don’t feel they belong to me really: I just look after them.

When I left on holiday my rose was at its best with sprays of tight, pale and pink- tinged buds and some open blooms; but when I came back from Turkey a week later, the rose was already blown and drifts of pale petals litter the over-long grass.

One minute I was standing on a hot hillside among the dry creeping, scrubby plants, listening to the chorus of the cicadas and admiring the tall, airy pine trees against a blue, blue sky: then I am home again, sweeping up rose petals and talking to the pigeon. What next, I wonder?

Notes:

A “squab” is a baby pigeon.

“Ethel” comes from an old English name, Etheldreda which harks back to an old Saxon name: Aethelthryth meaning noble and strength.

Our good friend Colin was a true eccentric, a collector of all sorts of things, predominantly tools and an incorrigible hoarder. He could be frustrating but also very kind; he was both highly intelligent and sometimes totally without common sense! For instance, he once wrote to a well-known department store to complain about the quality of their bed sheets which had torn when he had gone to bed in his boots!

Colin had the most beautiful handwriting and he liked to label his finds with brown luggage labels upon which he would describe where he got the item, who sold it to him, a description of its purpose, a comment as to its suitability for this purpose and any other details. Colin’s knowledge was wide-ranging and detailed; it was gleaned from books, articles and from years of conversations with interesting people across all walks of life. He liked to talk and it could be difficult to get a word in edgeways.

His background was in commercial printing, illustration and graphic design. Colin was appreciative of what he saw as “good design” and fiercely dismissive of things which didn’t meet his exacting standards. Colin helped my husband to collect some equipment from a school, among which was a discarded wooden box which he labelled: “typical of the poor standard of work being produced in college nowadays!” He was however, also very concerned with the wellbeing of those he taught and he kept up with a number of his former students.

Since his death, Colin’s wide-ranging collections are being dispersed and people all over England and beyond have come to recognise and appreciate his beautiful quirky labels.

Notes:

Colin Maughan 1938 – 2019

There is a faint rattle as something moves inside the little wooden apple if you shake it. It is scarcely taller than an inch, shiny red with a yellow patch and a tiny wooden stalk that is pressed into a hole on the indented top. I really can remember my sense of surprise when I was shown how to open up the apple by twisting the top and bottom sections. Inside is a tiny wooden coffee set. There are two cups and two saucers as well as a coffee pot which even has a minute lid; each piece is decorated with a simple brushstroke design of a red flower with a leaf on either side.

For a while I tried keeping the apple in the doll’s house but somehow, I couldn’t find a narrative that worked: why would the little dolls have a coffee set in a giant wooden apple? It just didn’t make sense. Eventually I moved my little felt mouse family into the doll’s house. Like Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, the little mice seemed quite at home in the doll’s house and were perfectly suited to keeping a coffee set inside an apple.

Notes:

The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter describes the antics of two little mice, Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, in a doll’s house.

I don’t know what to do with this frail and rather tatty silk kimono: I wish I did. For a while I hung it from a hanger against the wall where I could admire it, like a picture, until the dust began to settle and accumulate.

The kimono is green silk and embroidered with coloured threads and much golden brocade. Two large dragons with serpent scales take centre place top front and back, a further pair grace the sleeves and four smaller dragons pose above a sea of blue sewn whorls. These are followed by a mass of thick gold thread spirals and then comes a deep border of gold diagonal-stripes which reaches the floor. A contrasting fabric marks out the neck opening collar-like and ends with a frog knot closure fastening below the hip on the right side.

This garment was part of the stage costume collection of Worcester Park Choral Society which my grandparents belonged to in the early 1940’s. When the society disbanded my father chose this piece and for a while it was largely unseen. Then for years it hung in my parent’s wardrobe and had occasional appearances in plays or fancy-dress parties.

As a child I was intrigued by the opulence of the design and fascinated by the symbolism which then, as now, I couldn’t interpret. Now I have become the custodian of this old but splendid kimono. What shall I do with it?

This small, upright metal strainer stands in its own little saucer, eminently practical. It has flat, decorative lug handles with an interlocking geometric design of straight lines and curves which makes me think of Chinese patterns. The sides are very fine mesh and although it is made for tea, I shall make coffee in it.

For the last nearly twenty years my birthday has coincided with a steam fair we work at, selling engineering and woodworking tools and junk. It is somewhat of a tradition, for my children to hunt up and down the stalls for something unique to give me on the day. This year they found me a  little strainer to replace a cracked plastic one I have had for years. This modest present pleases me because it reminds me of camping, cold fresh mornings, water heating on the gas stove, my cup with a good spoon of ground coffee waiting in a little mesh sieve.

After I have given it a good clean, I make my first cup of coffee. I savour the smell as I wait for the coffee to brew, then lift the strainer out: I can see my children’s love in amongst the coffee grounds.

Notes:

I aim to buy as little plastic as possible and recycle, save and mend where I can. A present that recognises these aims makes me feel truly happy.

One toast rack is an elegant silver-plated affair, the other a sombre piece of pottery and both come with their own tale of mortality.

The first toast rack has an oval base which sits daintily on four flattened round electro-plated “feet”. The regular loops to hold the toast are offset, rather than centrally positioned on the oval base. Each toast-supporting loop curves outward from the base describing its own sideways oval: small, then medium, rising to a bigger central one with a curled loop handle, then decreasing in size.

When my great aunt was recuperating after a major car accident, she stayed with my grandmother in what had been their childhood home. My grandmother took her up a breakfast tray each morning and this was the toast rack she used. It always held four neat triangles of white toast. Looking after my great aunt must have reminded my grandmother of the months my great aunt spent in her teens convalescing from TB. With both brothers and a husband lost to the second World War, their sisterly devotion makes sense.

The second toast rack is an altogether different piece, made of pottery by my father it is a little, dark blue-glazed wooded scene, where small and uneven pointy trees with faces, form lines for the toast to lean on. It looks like a cemetery and at one end is a tiny memorial to burned toast! I’m not sure if many people do it now: but my childhood mornings were often greeted by the scratchy sound of a knife scraping off the charred layer on an overdone piece of bread.

My grandmother scraped her toast on the brick path by the back door. Burned toast was a regular occurrence in my childhood and my dad’s quirky toast rack celebrates this. Both racks, so different,  would have similar tales to tell of burned toast.

The curtains are faded cotton, wide vertical stripes of pink, lilac and pale apricot: overprinted horizontal bands of pale crimson turn each stripe into an oblong, the crimson taking on different shades as it passes over pink, lilac then apricot in repeat. As the light changes outside, the quality of light shining through the curtains changes too.

I remember so clearly how I liked to watch this happening of light and colour play out every morning. I loved how the sunlight glowed through the cloth and cast a pink atmosphere into my bedroom, which deepened and faded. I was fascinated by the different hues and overlapping chequered tints of colour filtered through the curtains.  This was my first, most profound experience of colour and light: I was about four years old.

When I was seven years old, we moved to Edinburgh. The windows in my new bedroom were now both wider and taller which stretched out the curtains and lessened their magic. I looked the curtains out recently and put them up again. Even though after fifty-five years they are frayed and washed out, when the sun shines through, the colour still glows.