Wimborne St Giles

Tonight I am sat outside an old church in the village of Wimborne St Giles having just dropped eldest daughter at work and going from the Horton Inn to Glen’s piano lesson. I haven’t been here for years and years as Alison has taken the children before I’m home from school. I remember bringing Natasha a long time ago and marking some practice Key Stage 3 exam papers in April it must have been as it was warm enough to sit outside and the exams are in early May. I’m going back to 1995 I would guess when Natasha was just 6.

I would drop her off for the half hour lesson and walk a little way down the road to a bridge where I sometimes brought the children on a Sunday morning to play ‘Pooh Sticks’ seeing who would win the race between the sticks. It was usually the case that no one could recognise their own stick and we played it almost like a modern sports day with no winners and no losers. Of course I was just being too considerate to tell them I always won and still hold the world record for undefeated stick races in Wimborne St Giles. Perhaps I exaggerate but it was always a beautiful place. One other thing that is clear in my memory is that a house, a wonderful abode, imposing itself next to the road, was in a perpetual state of repair. I never saw it without some skeleton of scaffolding protecting it. The only other place I’ve ever seen such a thing is any cathedral you care to mention. You can never see a cathedral without scaffolding someone. You often see scaffolding without a cathedral of course but that isn’t the point.

So having dropped Glen off, I took a stroll down the road and enjoyed the huge clumps of snowdrops. Clump is too clumsy a word for them though. They are much too delicate for that. I ought to say swathes. No, not that either. How about a bravery of snowdrops reconnoitring the world above the earth? The river was flowing steadily with small fish, brown trout, in the shadows of the bridge and a robin experimenting with its early song. Of scaffolding, there was none. Has time healed the house or are they between repairs? Perhaps there has been a falling out between the householders and the builders as patience tested over many years has snapped with no resolution to the problems with the masonry or the foundations or whatever other problem caused them to move in originally.

The snowdrops will be back next year.