R
Robert Harrison
Guest
TILLINGHAM
The old one, smoking his clay pipe,
sits in the gloaming of an early summer.
The village green of Tillingham becomes a
playground for its inhabitants. Ducks, with
their yellow costumed balls of down, Conga
Dance in consecutive order towards a cloud
mottled pond. A plowboy whistles, his hob-
nailed boots sparking their way home to a
thatched abode of untold age. Gray squirrels
gambol and twitter, running hither and thither
among the tussocks dotting the green. Children
play on car tire swing, held by clothes line that
snakes towards the bough of a dapple leafed
Horse Chestnut tree, its years longer than the
village itself. Sticky buds adorn its branches
like dates from the far east. Soon it will be
conker time, and a boy will try every way
to harden his promising champion, little
knowing the observer knows the secret.
He, who has spent eighty summers in the
village, not roaming more than seven miles
from the green in all those years. Content
in his rut of hard work and domesticity.
Cottages, dressed up like Ginger Bread
Houses, their bottle glass windows lit by
smoking paraffin wick. They talk in silent word.
“Here I am, there is nothing pretentious about me.
I will keep you warm in the winter and cool in
the summer, take me or leave me”. A cock
crows, curfew time for his ladies. And the smells
of bacon and ham and fresh bread mix with that
of the summers gloaming. Tillingham prepares
to rest, and the gold of its Cotswald stone dims
in luster and accepts the night.
The old one, smoking his clay pipe,
sits in the gloaming of an early summer.
The village green of Tillingham becomes a
playground for its inhabitants. Ducks, with
their yellow costumed balls of down, Conga
Dance in consecutive order towards a cloud
mottled pond. A plowboy whistles, his hob-
nailed boots sparking their way home to a
thatched abode of untold age. Gray squirrels
gambol and twitter, running hither and thither
among the tussocks dotting the green. Children
play on car tire swing, held by clothes line that
snakes towards the bough of a dapple leafed
Horse Chestnut tree, its years longer than the
village itself. Sticky buds adorn its branches
like dates from the far east. Soon it will be
conker time, and a boy will try every way
to harden his promising champion, little
knowing the observer knows the secret.
He, who has spent eighty summers in the
village, not roaming more than seven miles
from the green in all those years. Content
in his rut of hard work and domesticity.
Cottages, dressed up like Ginger Bread
Houses, their bottle glass windows lit by
smoking paraffin wick. They talk in silent word.
“Here I am, there is nothing pretentious about me.
I will keep you warm in the winter and cool in
the summer, take me or leave me”. A cock
crows, curfew time for his ladies. And the smells
of bacon and ham and fresh bread mix with that
of the summers gloaming. Tillingham prepares
to rest, and the gold of its Cotswald stone dims
in luster and accepts the night.