.... Dereks Resolutions..... New Years Day and a black easterly was blowing in from the sea and The Lizard. I want you to listen to me. Im listening. From where I was standing with my back to the fire place, my head level with the great granite lintel which had been heaved into place when the cottage was built five hundred years before, I could see Jeannie in our galley of a kitchen, concentrating on a recipe book open before her Youre not listening, I said, or if youre listening, youre not hearing. I wont be a second. The kitchen is very small, eight feet long and five across; and yet it has numerous small cupboards with natural wood doors that go from floor to ceiling………………….. For ten years Jeannie and I had lived with paraffin and calor gas and an old petrol pump which had brought the water up from our well; and we were content. There were no groans from Jeannie when she cooked breakfast on the paraffin stove……. I’m ready, said Jeannie, closing the recipe book, what is it you want to say? I want to list my New Year resolutions. She laughed. How very funny. Im serious. Oh really ... . New Year resolutions are, of course, a perennial joke. They are made to be broken. There are certain things I want to do, I said, and I am always putting off doing them. Sensible things. And perhaps if I parcel them together in a package of New Year resolutions I might make myself carry them out. Perhaps .... ‘All right, she said, curling herself on the sofa, tell me about your resolutions. Well, I said, pausing for a moment while I prised out with a matchstick the ash remnants of my pipe into the ashtray on my desk, I want to start my New Year resolutions with what I am doing now ... instead of spilling the ash carelessly on the desk, which it is my habit to do, Im going to knock the ash cleanly into the ashtray like so... . The ash, with the aid of the matchstick and a knock, fell neatly into the tray. Thats a good start, said Jeannie laughing, what next? (see what next on Wednesday!) extracts from A Sun on the Lintel photos and drawing © IPC Media
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 01:01:00 +0000