Wednesday 27 February 2008

Grandpa David


Do you remember the film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"? Not the recent version but the one from the seventies: full-on colour and surreal midgets singing bad-tempered ditties at every turn.

And can you picture Charlie's grandparents, lying top-to-tail all day in a big bed in the living room? Well, that's us, in the evenings in the countryside, lying snug under the covers against an evening chill, all our entertainments to hand to save us moving our aching bodies.

I look across at David, his glasses perched on his nose, raising his eyebrows like a satyr above them to comment. He has a big bag of walnuts in his lap, donated by one of our hosts, and he is contentedly shelling them with a twist of the knife, while chatting in the peace of the dark woods.

12 February 2008

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