Bredonborough A bright and sunny
11.56
Bredonborough.
A bright and sunny day…
Into the Cellar for morning reading. This was interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door: two carpet-sellers arriving unheralded. They hustled, and tried various hustling techniques including lying, eventually blaming me for their van-full-of-carpets journey here ending without a sale. I had previously asked them to call beforehand, of which they were well aware and acknowledged.
As I was standing on the threshold, presumably an innocent available to hustling, a well-dressed thirtyish woman pushing a pram stopped, and hovered. She continued to hover, and clearly intended to remain. I looked away from the carpet-hustlers, and directly at her: she spoke:
Q: May I ask you for a favour?
A: This ain’t a good time.
Her gruntle dissed, she continued on her way, another casualty of raging heartlessness: she only wanted to ask a favour, after all. I returned to the matter of dealing with serious professional hustling, not merely amateurish hustling of the local variety, and soon afterwards all hustling was brought to a finish. I returned to the Cellar.
18.23 Lunch at The Angel & Trumpet with our cousins from Kynaston Lodge, near Ross-On-Wye: Malcolm and Gill, with spouses Barbie and Mervyn. Malcolm and Gill’s Mother Evelyn was Edie’s Sister. A feature of the Fripp Kids’ Summer, throughout the 1950s, was a week with the Harris family at Kynaston. Rural Herefordshire in that decade was very different time in the world.
A post-lunch walk down the garden I…
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… returning to coffee and tea by the back door, with family stories and the history of Kynaston. Most informative. Cousins have left with an invitation to return and see the house next time.
Supper with the Sistery Person ahead…
20.56 … on the balcony of Blower’s I…
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… planning fresh family adventures for tomorrow.
The evening street…
