...you meet some new neighbours, and an invitation to come and have a chow down on your front lawn is accepted with great good humour and graciousness.
We had a late lunch today, The Husband and I, while our house guests are out at the coast. We were washing up in a desultory sort of a way, the old-fashioned way, in a sink, with one washing and the other drying, and gazing absent-mindedly out of the window when we spotted some faces we didn't recognise coming up the hill. Attached to bodies we also didn't recognise, one of which was immediately arresting.
You need to know something about these houses. The half-dozen dwellings on this corner where we live are arse about face. The eat-in kitchens are at the front, and the sitting rooms are at the back. This, I think, is bloody brilliant because it also means the kitchen windows overlook the street and the sitting room windows spy out over the gardens into the fields and woods and to the blue remembered hills beyond. This view behind us is what sold me on the house exactly thirteen years ago. It's why I bought it, it's why I chose to leave the Cotswolds to move here, it's why WE now have decided to retire here.
Anyhoo,I digress. The new faces, you cry! What about these new faces? One was young and fresh and male, one was even younger and female and awfully sweet, and the third was long - very, very long - and inarguably equine. First the Husband exclaimed. Oooh! he said. Say, look at that! I did more than look. I dropped the dishcloth into the suds, wiped my hands hurriedly and shot out of the front door without even excusing myself.
These new neighbours I just HAD to meet.
We had a late lunch today, The Husband and I, while our house guests are out at the coast. We were washing up in a desultory sort of a way, the old-fashioned way, in a sink, with one washing and the other drying, and gazing absent-mindedly out of the window when we spotted some faces we didn't recognise coming up the hill. Attached to bodies we also didn't recognise, one of which was immediately arresting.
You need to know something about these houses. The half-dozen dwellings on this corner where we live are arse about face. The eat-in kitchens are at the front, and the sitting rooms are at the back. This, I think, is bloody brilliant because it also means the kitchen windows overlook the street and the sitting room windows spy out over the gardens into the fields and woods and to the blue remembered hills beyond. This view behind us is what sold me on the house exactly thirteen years ago. It's why I bought it, it's why I chose to leave the Cotswolds to move here, it's why WE now have decided to retire here.
Anyhoo,I digress. The new faces, you cry! What about these new faces? One was young and fresh and male, one was even younger and female and awfully sweet, and the third was long - very, very long - and inarguably equine. First the Husband exclaimed. Oooh! he said. Say, look at that! I did more than look. I dropped the dishcloth into the suds, wiped my hands hurriedly and shot out of the front door without even excusing myself.
These new neighbours I just HAD to meet.
It transpired on closer enquiry that the male human is seventeen, the female human is his nine-year-old sister, and the equine is a sturdy and friendly black fell pony which the family acquired this Monday just gone. They were ambling her around the neighbourhood as part of an orientation and settling-in exercise. Some of the time the boy had been riding, he said, but as they approached our corner he had already dismounted and was leading her gently along the road.
They stopped and chatted. We talked and talked, about ponies in general, the area, my attempts to take riding lessons, local equine peeps we both knew. But most of all how the new pony was settling in and what they hope to achieve with her. At at the end of our companionable gossip I said, do you think she'd like a snack on our lawn? And the boy said yes. So he led her up the garden path (how often does THAT actually happen?!) and she got her head down for a bit and nibbled on our grass.
They stopped and chatted. We talked and talked, about ponies in general, the area, my attempts to take riding lessons, local equine peeps we both knew. But most of all how the new pony was settling in and what they hope to achieve with her. At at the end of our companionable gossip I said, do you think she'd like a snack on our lawn? And the boy said yes. So he led her up the garden path (how often does THAT actually happen?!) and she got her head down for a bit and nibbled on our grass.
I thought, how GOOD is that? How very singular and out of the ordinary? Then after they had trotted on. I reconsidered. Or maybe not. Maybe this is how it is going to be, now we have retired here, on the very edge of a small market town, with fields and woods and hills and livestock all about us.
Her name is Flower. I think she may have been an arbinger of Spring.
What say you?
