A Vision of Raw Life
These Gypsies that have established such an encampment upon the erstwhile pure sward of the Telsey's banks near Quivery Bridge (and they continue to arrive; just now, this evening, two more caravans have shambled past my gate and they have joined the milling throng, the madding horde of these Romany folk; fat men in tight shirts water and run their rough sleek ponies; dark-faced fierce women - their visages as fearsome as my black fire-grate - gut hares and bake hedgehogs and squat beneath the vans; their nubile daughters shuffle around or flounce in sullen sulky gyres, as if knowingly trapped, as if aware that time and the life in which they are embedded will destroy their shocking beauty and mould their graceful forms into the hunkering hulks of their mothers' images; shrieking children torment ragged dogs) have shown me a compelling filthy vision of real raw life, framed in the elegant parameters of my West Window.
Amos Bounty's wheelbarrow (as I have said, this is disused, for it is stoved in the rear - a sow with toothache chewed it through in '36, a sow named 'Puggy' who had her throat hacked open for her pains the following day by Dick Dackery from Lugg's Tump Farm; how she screamed as she was hoisted into the cloudless sky) lay abandoned among the buttercups, for old Amos had fled up to Timblett's Mead, to crop the nettles for his soup that he loves to sip in Spring-tide. I was alone and just about to start on clearing out the old duck-sheds. I was at the shed door with my sickle in my right hand when detected a wheezing breath behind me.
It was one of the gypsy crones, right behind me, with a gorgeous young girl by her side, who I assumed would be her daughter. Dressed in gaudy rags, sultry as two Spanish maidens in their dirt, they stood and stared into my eyes, bearing their baskets of trinkets and spells.
But soft, gentle Reader, for the milk will o'er-boil on my stove. I must attend to my night-cap and leave you for now. There shall be more of this anon!
'Beware of the spud-toad lest you squash him flat' as old John Doolap used to say!
Amos Bounty's wheelbarrow (as I have said, this is disused, for it is stoved in the rear - a sow with toothache chewed it through in '36, a sow named 'Puggy' who had her throat hacked open for her pains the following day by Dick Dackery from Lugg's Tump Farm; how she screamed as she was hoisted into the cloudless sky) lay abandoned among the buttercups, for old Amos had fled up to Timblett's Mead, to crop the nettles for his soup that he loves to sip in Spring-tide. I was alone and just about to start on clearing out the old duck-sheds. I was at the shed door with my sickle in my right hand when detected a wheezing breath behind me.
It was one of the gypsy crones, right behind me, with a gorgeous young girl by her side, who I assumed would be her daughter. Dressed in gaudy rags, sultry as two Spanish maidens in their dirt, they stood and stared into my eyes, bearing their baskets of trinkets and spells.
But soft, gentle Reader, for the milk will o'er-boil on my stove. I must attend to my night-cap and leave you for now. There shall be more of this anon!
'Beware of the spud-toad lest you squash him flat' as old John Doolap used to say!
posted by D Lerium-Tremens | 2:46 PM
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