Tag Archives: Mrs Addington

Two Things

Posted on by
10

I’m writing about two Things today.  Thing One is the Country Living Christmas Fair, taking place in London in early Nov.  I’ll be there, giving more of a chat than a talk, in the Theatre at 2.30pm on Wed 7 and Thu 8 Nov.  Should you happen to be at the Fair then, do pleeeeeeese consider popping into the theatre and keeping me company!  I’ll be burbling on about the joys and pitfalls of writing about my neighbours, and about the joys (no pitfalls that I’ve noticed yet) of writing about my animals.  With accompanying pictures and photos.  Apart from anything else, I’d just love to meet you.

Thing Two.  A couple of weeks ago I was about to tell you about what the geese did to Mrs Addington, when I got completely side-tracked by seeing a ghost or possibly a reveller on their way to a lunchtime fancy dress party in Bath and wrote about that instead.  Back to the geese.

Mrs Addington has recently bought a bicycle.  It is splendid thing, of the sit-bolt-upright-and-have-a-wicker-basket variety.  The bike is black and stately, and Mrs Addington has started to majestically peddle around the village, ringing the old-fashioned bike bell to clear the road as she sails past dog walkers, ramblers and horse people.  She doesn’t stop to talk to anybody, the whole thing is far too important for that.  She swishes past, gazing ahead to a far horizon.

Anyway, a fortnight ago I was filling a barrow full of hardcore to dump in the muddy orchard gateway and had left the gate open.  And of course the geese went through it and out onto the road.  And of course they chose the very moment that Mrs Addington came swooshing down the hill past our cottage.  I heard the tingle of her bicycle bell, and the honk of the geese in attack mode, and the grating noise of an expensive new bike brake being rigorously applied, and the hoarse cry of a pillar of the community being mugged by a gander.

I abandoned my barrow and rushed to the rescue – just in time.  Mrs Addington was upended in the thick grass of the verge, and Porous was psyching himself up to continue his very successful attack on the bike by seizing a genuine beakful of Mrs A.  Mrs A was encased in a particularly rigid tweed, so he probably wouldn’t have got through, but the situation was far from ideal.  I chased Porous away, helped Mrs A and her mercifully undamaged bike to the upright position and offered her a cup of tea (“thank you, no!!”)  Porous waddled off to his wives and told them loudly about his glorious victory, with accompanying gestures, which didn’t help either.

Mrs Addington has graciously forgiven the geese, and is still peddling decorously around the place, but I notice that she now gives my neck of the woods a wide berth.  And I can’t say I blame her!

London (eventually)

Posted on by
8

Went to London yesterday to see the musical ‘Matilda’, and it was awesomely good.  But I don’t go to London often, so make more of a meal of it than those who go every day and travel nonchalantly there and back without a quiver.  I had to feed the animals early, and find coat/shoes etc without mud (and worse) on them.  I like to get to the railway station ridiculously early and sit for hours on a cold bench looking mindlessly at ranks of parked cars in the distance.  Anything rather be late, and have to run, and just miss the train pulling heartlessly away as you hurtle down endless steps (I’ve done that, and I didn’t like it).

So it was a mixed blessing when Frank appeared at my side when I was hurling hay at the sheep, with something on his mind.  He’s a real countryman, is Frank, and there’s nothing he doesn’t know about ferrets in sickness and in health, but he does take a long time to get to the point.  Frank’s never been to London in his life, and probably never been on a train either.  So, with me beginning to hyperventilate, he started off the ‘well I saw you was along here and I thought to myself that I could toddle along and have a bit of a word’ thing that can go on for half an hour.  The gist of his song, arrived at after careful shepherding from me, was that he thought my field of untouched Spring grass, which I’ve been nurturing all winter to give my lot a nice treat when the other fields are at their barest, would be just the thing for his newly lambed ewes.  I let him down gently, but it took time.

I whizzed home to start changing and Mrs Addington was on the doorstep.  She was collecting for a Good Cause and was expecting a cup of herb tea (not a mug, she doesn’t like mugs) and the chance to lecture me at length on exactly how Good the Cause was.  Not this time, Mrs A!  I stuffed a note into her box and fled indoors.  Finally (and this takes the biscuit) I opened up the gates (which I keep closed in case Maurice’s dairy herd are having one of their many little excursions into uncharted territory and decide to have a grand day out in my garden) and Maurice had parked his tractor plus harrows in my gateway and disappeared.  Gnawing my knuckles, I rushed about till I found him peaceably chatting to a neighbour about hedging, persuaded him to shift his mighty machine and finally got myself to the station.

Readers I made it, but only just and I didn’t calm down until I was actually in the theatre (and it was awesomely good).  But that’s basically why I don’t go to London very often.