Living On Three Continents: Estate Tour
...Dona Luisa, gardener and cook for an abundance of years, had virid fingers. Romance has it when she first arrived the flower beds were all timely roses with lavender interceded, but with diligous digging, she transplanted feral flowers from the surrounding hedgegroves, so that today we have towering hollyhocks, rampant morning glorious and dark-eyed daisies in dominance...
Susan Siddeley's "friend'' Gregorio, takes us on as most delightful and utterly unforgettable tour of a Chilean estate, fencing with language as he perambulates. (Or should that be promaberlates?)
Buenos días y bienvenido. Mi nombre es Gregorio. I am your guide today for the Tour in English. English being my favourable tongue and I grew up here in Chile with many; Daddy being of Danish Protestation and Mummy, French with a Catholic bent.
Please gather round as we process through the extentious Garden of Retreating at Los Parronales, developed by the titulous Lady Susan last century. As you will perceive, it is a floral mix of petunials. Dona Luisa, gardener and cook for an abundance of years, had virid fingers. Romance has it when she first arrived the flower beds were all timely roses with lavender interceded, but with diligous digging, she transplanted feral flowers from the surrounding hedgegroves, so that today we have towering hollyhocks, rampant morning glorious and dark-eyed daisies in dominance.
The fountain on your right was constructed in memorance of a costly family member. Unfortunately, its trickling waters have ceased to flow with the failing of a calcious pump. Sniff, as we pass, the aphrodisiac perfume of the magnificent magnolia tree, and thence beware!
Follow me if you will along the shady patio where hundreds of scribes have traversed, florid words littering their heads. The titulous Lady was avid with words. Besides the retreating garden, she founded the legend of the Craven Ghost, whose raspy cough echoes on the wind when all is low, and only the hardy stir, at three o’clock in the afternoon.
When the titulous lady arrived with her geological husband many decades ago, the then foreman imported to her his fear of a repetitious tapping in the darker hours. After groping the building, the lady contended with the idea of a pining ruminant tugging a tether. She claimed a hook in a bedroom wall as corroberation of a formal milking shed. The forefellow then confessed the prious owner had been deviant. Besides hooking up his girlfriends, he liked to lie back and watch them in action in the mirror over the bed. I will point where you might see stigmata from the cornering nails.
Please enter the door on your right now. As you will notice, it is abnormal, and swivels on a pivotal axis. Romance has it that lovers of the Lady Susan could make simulated exits when the master arrived home unpredictably. Every window in this room is grilled, supporting the proposal that people were enslaved here. People have imitated the titulous lady was!
Pass with me, please, through the living quarters. Note the buttressed ceiling which soars to an upscale level. The hanging gondolier is executed from iron, although now, the brassieres support electrical lights not scandalous flames. Let us climb and view the attic room featuring the Romeoic balcony, which accidently, is intimated at the stair rail top, a curve where Lady S. would sometimes stand and recite poems to an imaginary audition. The attic room has an oral window where she loved to sit and scribble with her notorious quill pen. The pen is now on display in the gift shop, where you may purchase replications. Quills are plucked from the manifold lapwings residing in the adjacent fields. Their shriekings still torment the nights here.
Always about, you will see negrous cats, descendants of Black Tom, a rabid ratter. Witness their scrufulous flesh. Dogs are plenitous too, fawning in nature, if not colour.
We will now transgress to the Sala or games room at the far side of the house and check the mosaic marble floor that once supported an antique billiard table, also on view, the fine fieldstone fireplace that burns throughout the chilly Chile winter. The titulous lady kept her Pisco Sour collection on the sit-at wicker bar over in the corner. Please approach and take a sip from the sample bottle.
If we promenade outside, we can witness a Christ figure hanging on the Sala chimney breast which the lady clothed by letting a fern grow over it. Los Parronales lies in the village of El Noviciado indicating the ground was once sacred to the Papal church. It is likely she found veiling the Christ figure, a way of owning the beauteous village name without succumbing to holy rape.
We are now approximating the end of our circumlocution. The Los Parronales Fundation is always gracious if visitors place unused banknotes in the box beside the gate, and unnecessary coins in the hat I am extending. Offerings go to feeding the negrous cats. Your queries will be pleasurably answered.
Gracias.
**
Susan really does live on the Los Parronales estate, some two-score miles from Santiago, Chile, a writers' retreat
http://losparronales.blogspot.com/
Her deliciously entertaining guided tour was inspired by Phil Powley’s Poem “Guided Tour”, a Writers News Competition winner circa 2000.
