Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Absent Friends
Digging’s pretty rubbish, isn’t it? I won’t be sorry to see the back of it.
The soil in our garden is unremittingly sandy – grab a handful and it slips away through your fingers like dust, or time. Dig a hole, and it fills itself in again while your back is turned. You begin to wonder if it’s trying to tell you something. But what? Leave it buddy, go watch the football instead? Chill out, have a beer. Go feed the blog.
And sawing is even worse. The wood feels so damp, the teeth keep getting bogged down and stuck. It seems to close itself in around the saw, like a healing wound, making it as unbudgeable as the sword in the stone. What’s that all about?
The best part has been watching Girlfriend’s extraordinary marble detection skills at work. She can sniff them out like a pig finding truffles. I’ve found just two marbles, to her twenty.
We’ve also found a golf ball, the rusty whacking end of a golf club and two golf tees; a tiny plastic toy girl in a red dress; a five peseta piece; a lump of wood the shape and size of a chocolate mini-egg, with a faded pattern and a loop of thread for hanging; one side of the frame of an aluminium double glazing unit that we couldn’t shift and had to end up burying again; three or four unidentified bones; and lots of lumps of coal from when the house would have had coal fires instead of central heating.
Last year when we were stripping wallpaper, I uncovered a message on the wall that read simply “Arthur and Graham 1967.” I’ve been hoping to learn more about Arthur and Graham’s alliance, maybe via a Blue Peter style time capsule.
“Hi. We are Arthur and Graham. It is 1967. We are the World Champions at football. The Beatles have just released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We like it a lot, it is very different from anything we have ever heard before. The Sixties is more of a London thing. It won’t arrive North for some time yet. You are one year old, Tim. We hope you are very happy living in our house, and we like what you’re doing with that footpath.”
So far no such capsule has been forthcoming. I was also hoping to unearth a Rickenbacker twelve string, and maybe a seven inch copy of This Charming Man in mint condition, but these too, like a cure for cancer or the secret of eternal youth, remain undiscovered for the time being.
The soil in our garden is unremittingly sandy – grab a handful and it slips away through your fingers like dust, or time. Dig a hole, and it fills itself in again while your back is turned. You begin to wonder if it’s trying to tell you something. But what? Leave it buddy, go watch the football instead? Chill out, have a beer. Go feed the blog.
And sawing is even worse. The wood feels so damp, the teeth keep getting bogged down and stuck. It seems to close itself in around the saw, like a healing wound, making it as unbudgeable as the sword in the stone. What’s that all about?
The best part has been watching Girlfriend’s extraordinary marble detection skills at work. She can sniff them out like a pig finding truffles. I’ve found just two marbles, to her twenty.
We’ve also found a golf ball, the rusty whacking end of a golf club and two golf tees; a tiny plastic toy girl in a red dress; a five peseta piece; a lump of wood the shape and size of a chocolate mini-egg, with a faded pattern and a loop of thread for hanging; one side of the frame of an aluminium double glazing unit that we couldn’t shift and had to end up burying again; three or four unidentified bones; and lots of lumps of coal from when the house would have had coal fires instead of central heating.
Last year when we were stripping wallpaper, I uncovered a message on the wall that read simply “Arthur and Graham 1967.” I’ve been hoping to learn more about Arthur and Graham’s alliance, maybe via a Blue Peter style time capsule.
“Hi. We are Arthur and Graham. It is 1967. We are the World Champions at football. The Beatles have just released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We like it a lot, it is very different from anything we have ever heard before. The Sixties is more of a London thing. It won’t arrive North for some time yet. You are one year old, Tim. We hope you are very happy living in our house, and we like what you’re doing with that footpath.”
So far no such capsule has been forthcoming. I was also hoping to unearth a Rickenbacker twelve string, and maybe a seven inch copy of This Charming Man in mint condition, but these too, like a cure for cancer or the secret of eternal youth, remain undiscovered for the time being.

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