Chapters (22)
- Cover
- BY THE SAME AUTHOR
- Title
- Dedication
- CONTENTS
- Map of Underhill
- ME (NOW)
- GROUND UNDER REPAIR (1990)
- DRIFTWOOD (1968)
- STOPCOCK (2019)
- ME (NOW)
- PAPPS WEDGE (2043)
- ME (NOW)
- MESSAGE BOARD (2012)
- REPORT OF DEBRIS (2014)
- BILLYWITCH (1932)
- SEARCH ENGINE (2099)
- EPILOGUEME (NOW)
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on the Author
- Supporters
- Copyright
Anne Cherry: High-waisted jeans. Barely worn. Bought in Next sale, 2008/09. £7 ONO.
Megan Beaker: I lost my maidenhead around the back of the tor. It was the day of the fair. A French boy was responsible. He wasn’t the age of a boy and didn’t think he was a boy but he was. There were lots of French on the moor, then. They had been in the prison, then were released, on the condition they stayed within the parish. At the fair there were heads on sticks, carved and painted black, and people threw rotten apples and onions at them and cheered. Mr Oldsworthy, Underhill’s baker, played the fiddle. I could smell the nutty aroma that always lingered on Oldsworthy’s dusty jacket as the French boy led me on past him by the hand and I knew the song from a long time ago and knew it was part of me. After that I could hear them start to play ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses’. Young dogs were wrestling, looping and twirling on the grass, out of breath. We went to the barn. It’s still there. The cuckoo was crying from the tor top and as I looked into the stone in front of me and the French boy tried to find me and breathed hot breath into my ear I felt like I was the stone and I felt 15,000, not fifteen. The stone was full of stories and there would be more. But about this story I never told a soul. On the way home the words to the song were in my head: the roses one, not the one I felt was part of me. ‘One morning in the month of June. While feather’d warbling songsters. Their charming notes did sweetly tune. I overheard a lady. Lamenting in sad grief and woe.’ I stopped at a fallen tree and collected kindling, looking for the drier bits caught on branches above, like my father had told me. It had rained that morning but it was easy to forget that had ever happened.
Judith Sparrow: Terence Black, in case you are wondering, the Nissan Micra who you didn’t thank when it made quite an elaborate manoeuvre down a farm track to let you pass the other day on the lane up to Hood Gate just beyond the sharp right-hand bend was driven by me.
Anne Cherry: Selection of old board (and other) games. Kerplunk, Downfall, Scrabble, Monopoly, Pictionary, more. All in excellent condition. £20 the lot. Individual prices considered if no takers.
Mark Laggs: When I was playing Downfall as a kid a bee once went in one of the holes on the turny bits, thinking it was a flower. I will always remember that.
Diana Wilson: Turny bits?