I have a wandering brief at present – my personal desk-builder is putting the finishing touches to the desk of my dreams and I have been relocated.
Which is why I’m installed temporarily in the cosy sitting room with an
ad hoc arrangement of computer, router and printer (involving a viper’s nest of cabling), an Ikea step stool and an antique Pembroke table*. I understand the necessity of my temporary home but I am not a happy bunny. I feel much displaced.
In fact nothing is in its place – even the Internet has gone ‘walkabout’ in the past few days. A long conversation with BT’s little helpers in the Indian sub continent was predictably fruitless – we’ve been here before – we’ve done that: the checking, the plugging and unplugging. Pretty soon – in 4 or 5 working days the engineer from BT (or is it now Open Reach?) will be standing in front of me and, in that manner peculiar to all specialists when confronted with an amateur, will shake his head and suck his breathe in wearily. “You’ve got how many phone sockets? Seven? Really? Seven. Blimey’ More sucking and shaking. “There’s your problem…’
Not, Mr Open Reach. Not. Please take your new livery and box of screwdrivers down to our inadequate exchange, twiddle some knobs, open some valves and get our connection up to speed. Just because we live out in the sticks doesn’t mean we should be fobbed off with a second-class service – apparently it’s some sort of miracle we get Broadband here at all. Am I grateful? I pay for it at the same rate as in the city where interruptions to the service were few and far between. Whatever happened to inclusivity?
And that’s about as political as I’m going to get.
*The little table came from my father’s home – he remembered doing his homework at it as a small boy – this would be in the 1920’s. I can’t imagine letting a small boy loose on such a dainty piece these days but presumably the young Martin Arthur Cross was not a threat; he did seem to spend a lot of his childhood learning poetry by the yard - a fairly passive pursuit. The mahogany is unblemished and it still has all 4 legs. Had it been
chez nous, the Bouncing Bevanos Brothers would soon have rendered it to matchwood.
On the death of his parents the adult Martin brought the table to his own family home – from where I remember it – standing in the window, always polished, home to a lamp, a cyclamen and a silver cigarette box. There were playing cards in a drawer lined with a page from the Stratford Herald. And now it is with us, in a barn in Wales. And, just for a couple of days, home to a bit of high-tech gimcrackery that would have had old grandfather Cross sucking his teeth and shaking his head.
‘It does what? My goodness! Sends messages and pictures and plays tunes? All over the world? Instantly? You can ask it questions and buy things from it?‘
Well, Grandpa not today you can’t. We’re still waiting for Mumbai to call back to arrange a return visit from Mr Open Reach. And waiting. And waiting.
...and secondly, from the residents of the hen-house-on-wheels - 5 beautiful eggs. The dark one has been laid by Mrs Black (as opposed to Mrs Brown, Mrs Brown, Mrs Brown or Mrs Brown). Only yesterday did I complain that she was a bit of a passenger, doing nothing to earn her keep. Today - result. Apologies all round.
This is short-sleeve weather - it's made the garden's autumn tidy-up a much more pleasant task. 
Firstly we have the best read cow-poke in Trelystan - note that glasses' case in the vest pocket - ready to be whipped out at the turning of a page. A man's got to view what a man's got to view...
I did that - a somewhat weedy contribution - best illustrated by the photo of the view from our window this morning and might be outlined thus:
By 8 o'clock though the mist had evaporated, the sky was a clear blue and the day as beautiful as can be imagined - the lawn and fields heavy with silvery dew twinkling in the low morning sun. These autumn mornings, dank and chill, a hint of decay in the dying vegetation, will forever remind me of the trudge back to school after the summer holidays - except now those sensual reminders jolt my memory in October rather than September.
and kingcups and find shepherd's purse on a slag-heap. He shall know the tree-flowers, scented lime-tassels, blood-pink larch-tufts, white strands of the Spanish chestnut and tattered oak-plumes. He shall know orchids, mauve-winged bees and claret-coloured flies climbing up from mottled leaves. He shall see June red and white with ragged robin and cow parsley and the two campions. He shall tell a dandelion from sow thistle or goat's beard. He shall know the field flowers, lady's bedstraw and lady's slipper, purple mallow, blue chicory and the cranesbills - dusky, bloody, and blue as heaven. In the cool summer wind he shall listen to the rattle of harebells against the whistle of a distant train, shall watch clover blush and scabious nod, pinch the ample veitches, and savour the virgin turf. He shall know grasses, timothy and wag-wanton, and dust his finger-tips in Yorkshire fog. By the river he shall know pink willow-herb and purple spikes of loosestrife, and the sweetshop smell of water-mint where the rat dives silently from its hole. He shall know the velvet leaves and yellow spike of the old dowager, mullein, recognise the whole company of thistles, and greet the relatives of the nettle, wound-wort and hore-hound, yellow rattle, betony, bugle and archangel.
In autumn, he shall know the hedge lanterns, hips and haws and bryony. At Christmas he shall climb an old apple-tree for mistletoe, and know whom to kiss and how.
