Open Writing

It’s been a lovely summer. We’ve had a wedding in the road, though we were a bit sad that we didn’t see any of the bridal comings and goings. Next door there’s a new baby girl, and over the road there will soon be another newborn. No-one has been ill or gone to hospital, and no-one has died. As far as I know, no-one is contemplating leaving his or her other half, and a general feeling of goodwill has pervaded these long, hot, sunny days.

Up at the top, in one of the new houses that were built when Mr Ward’s land was cleared, a new family is installed and romping in the garden. The owners have gone abroad for a couple of years, and before they went they put turves on the roof of the workshop. As we look up the slope of our road, we can see this tiny, roof-height meadow burgeoning before our eyes, with dandelions and the odd buttercup thrusting their heads up to the sun. Some people clucked and disapproved when they first saw it, I can’t think why. It will be lovely in the Spring, when the birds have dropped all kinds of seed, and there are butterflies and ladybirds, and it’s a cat-free haven for sparrows and robins, blackbirds and pigeons alike. They say there’s a decline in the sparrow population; perhaps they have all come to live in our road, for there are plenty nesting in the ivy at the front of number four. There are house martins’ nests over the road, too: little half-soup-bowls of dried mud and spit are glued just under the guttering, and it was mid-September when the last nestfull was ready to fly. When they’ve gone, the nests lie empty and secure, and no amount of buffeting by rain and wind will dislodge them before their occupants return next year.

It’s October now. The first chill winds of Autumn have arrived, round the corners, under the doors. The Lady Summer has gone. At last the few flowers left in window boxes and hanging baskets are beginning to look forlorn, a bit weary, and ready to be replaced by pansies and clutches of daffodil bulbs that will make an appearance in the Spring. Right through the summer, we all kept an eye on each other’s flowers: nothing can die of drought in our road! And now the weather is changing; if a pot blows over, someone will see it and rush to the rescue. A ladder is borrowed to reach a blocked drainpipe, and too much ivy has to be removed from a wall. Prune the clematis, cut back the box hedge, - what’s this, the climbing rose is still in bloom? Leave it a few more days and enjoy the pink flowers tossing their heads in the wind, they’ll soon be gone.

So what have we done? What has changed? The house next door has been sold at last, though there’s no sign of anyone coming. It’s been empty for months, and the long, dishevelled grass has been sunbed and hunting ground for all the cats in the road. The bramble hedge has grown to monstrous proportions and legions of field mice and voles live safe and deep behind the prickly stems. Felix lies in wait until something stirs, then a dash and a pounce, and a stealthy slink to the bottom of the garden, a long tail dangling from a slack mouth. What feline heaven! To gloat, to tease, and then to hide from the world and eat what you have caught!

There’s always a grapevine in a village. Ask in the pub, ask in the newsagent’s, ask anywhere, and someone will know. Then ask in the other pub, the hairdresser’s, the local garden centre, and you have all the information you need.

“Who’s painting your house?”

“I'm changing the kitchen.”

“Do you know a good carpenter?”

“Yes, I’ll give you his number.”

And hedges are trimmed, fences repaired, and tables French polished, all because of the grapevine.

It’s been a busy summer for Daphne, the dog lady. She’s had all sizes, not the smallest nor the largest, but a good mix, temporary visitors while their owners were away. Millie the cat, from number six, has survived her nightly excursions over the main road, though she must be near the end of her nine lives. Fox and badger are not so lucky, and the early morning commuter will come across the casualties of the night. The foxes come through my garden while I sleep, but it’s only in spring that their strange, hoarse bark echoes across the valley.

This little road, my road, this cul-de-sac of just fourteen houses, has escaped any kind of thrombosis in the lives of the residents, but only yards away at either end, grey clouds of sadness have closed in. The old couple who used to walk slowly down the road to catch the bus, then slowly back again at four o’clock, don’t come any more. They sailed away on a magic carpet not long ago, travellers down to Menton, the Elysian Fields of their youth. Now the old man is in hospital, and who knows when he will return? The old lady has taken photographs of that last, brief holiday, and framed them in opulent gilt frames, a rich and poignant reminder of something that can never come again.

Down at the bottom of the road, beyond the traffic, Linda is dying of loneliness, and regularly calls for an ambulance to take her away from her misery. Years of depression and not enough love, but the walls she builds are of her own design. A millionaire’s wife, what’s the point of all that money? Visitors don’t call any more, she’s told them not to come. All the goodwill in the road isn’t welcome over there. What a sad, unnecessary state of affairs.

Now that the light summer evenings are gone, the microlight friends will not be flying by. This is a wealthy county, and we’re used to a sky full of hot-air balloons. Well not exactly full, of course, but on a fine evening with the right air currents, it can sometimes seem that way. This summer, for the first time, we became aware of a sound like an oversized bumble bee approaching, slow, invisible, not a busy “get-out-of-my-way” noise, like the private helicopters going home. (If you take a ride in a hot-air balloon, it’s surprising how many heli-pads you can see down below.)

Watching and waiting for the first time, to identify the source of the bumble bee noise, we saw what looked like a hang-glider’s canopy floating through the sky, a kind of framework slung underneath and a man on a seat, controlling the little gnat-whine of an engine. It made you want to laugh out loud, this rainbow coloured canopy with a body clearly visible underneath, trundling steadily through the sky. I wanted to say “over the rooftops”, for it wasn’t all that much higher up. A few days later the “gnat” was back again, but this time he had a friend! Two microlights, not many yards apart, out for an evening’s jaunt above the Surrey countryside!

Perhaps we’ve not seen the last of them for this year; somehow, it’s a wonderful bit of fantasy. The roads are full of cars and queues and noise, but someone, indeed two, can escape the hustle and bustle and just fly up into the sky! Why do I suddenly remember that wonderful. crazy bicycle ride at the end of the film “E.T”?

I wonder if they have a basket for bottled water and a sandwich? A mobile phone, perhaps, to “phone home”?

There’s the doorbell. My books for an autumn read, I think. The sun is out today, perhaps I won’t need them just yet.