Rambling
Saskia GottsMy favourite house in the village is called Rose Cottage. It’s a tiny bungalow, perhaps a person-and-a-half tall, with a windblown thatched roof. Ivy competes with the hibernating roses for space on the mini trellises affixed to the façade. It’s the very picture of the quaint English cottage – a phantom smell of freshly baked bread wafts from the chimney. The late owner was a friend of Clive’s, but someone new has just moved in. No doubt I’ll hear all about her, the new owner, from Jean at the church.
Clive is a character. His daughter renovated his bathroom years ago (a woman-contractor, her husband is a ‘stay-at-home father’ – whatever next?). Clive repurposed the old sink and loo as beds for his pansies; we’ll walk past them later. Clive himself will be asleep in his front room, his vintage shot-gun propped against the chintz sofa in which he’ll be slumped.
An Amazon van pulls up and the driver looks at me, pointedly. I move the dogs out of his way and head towards the village library. It’s just one room full of cookbooks, Stephen King and Marian Keyes. Battered copies of the Biggles books gather dust next to the shinier Rainbow Magic series, though I imagine they’re not so new anymore either. In the window, there are adverts for a Lionel Richie cover act performing in the nearest town.
Walking past the library, I hold on tight to the dogs to let some horses pass, then a Tesco van. The driver tries to edge around them, which agitates the horses. The riders are getting huffy too. There’s not enough room for both of them on the narrow lane.
They pass and the road is clear, revealing the church spire behind crisscrossing telephone wires. I head towards it, passing from bijou bungalows to uniform new-builds. Right before the church, however, are a gorgeous band of Georgian red brick homes. The dogs drag me on; they’re eager to move into the woods and chase squirrels which laugh at them from the trees, sweet idiots.
Someone, presumably Jean, has strung fairy lights across the church porch. She’s sellotaped the battery pack to one of the posts, but it has been raining and the tape is peeling. It looks crap. My family and I were supposed to go to the Christingle service on Christmas Eve, but my mother had a falling out with Jean who took issue with her recent absences from the Village Church Council meetings. She was on the receiving end of some passive-aggressive remarks about 'working women' and a boycott has been mandated.
Across from the church is the graveyard where my friends’ grandparents are buried. There are Refreshers wrappers and Kopparberg cans strewn about the perimeter again. I smile a little at the youthful irreverence. During lockdown the vicar caught me and a friend drinking pink Lucozade and Parma Violet gin in the woods behind the rectory. She smiled, too.
The rectory stands next to the graveyard; the vicar sells honey in mismatched jars out front. She’s left an honesty box sitting atop a laminate plea to ‘Save the Bees’. Embedded in a wall opposite the rectory is our postbox. I always point out the ‘V.R.’ emblazoned on it to my friends who visit. “Victoria Regina,” I enthuse, “it’s from the nineteenth-century.” None of them give a shit: it’s only a postbox. Someone has blue-tacked a flyer to its flaking paint; fake Lionel Ritchie’s face smoulders up at me again.