TIME - EXPERIENCE - LOCATION

10 Jan 2023

(A Personal Observation) By Ian Garmston

A Sunday School pupil of dear Marjorie Massey – 1950/60’s

The best bit of living at the same address for a long while is that memories
remain and perhaps playback recordings created years previously.
Significant folks in our life have stayed with Anne and myself here at
Moulton (Suffolk). Consequently, our bungalow contains an ocean of
special memories.

That settee is where I sit and read, or gaze down the garden. It is located in
the connecting space of an extension, built during 1995, to provide room
for a small business I was developing. This office is accessed through a
door by the bookcase. My Dad, Seth, died before it was built, so missed an
opportunity to watch it’s construction, which, after many years as a
carpenter within the Warrington building trade, he would have relished.
When we moved here in 1978 Seth made us a wooden two seater bench
and we positioned it on the (then) patio, in the exact location of that settee
now. It was the perfect place to while away benign summer evenings,
enjoying a beer and a cigarette. I gave up smoking in 1988, but would often
join him, while we put the world to rights. He was wise, in a down-to-earth
pragmatic sort of way, and whilst we did not always agree, I knew I could
always get rock-solid sensible advice from Dad whenever I was impaled
upon the horns of those dilemmas we call “life”!
As it happens, nobody has ever smoked inside our bungalow for the last 30
years. But VERY, VERY occasionally, both Anne and myself (separately),
have sometimes experienced a fleeting whiff of ciggie as we walk through
to the office. It is something and nothing. A phantom fragrance, gone by
the next heartbeat. But real enough (to us) for a moment of fond reflection.

For further information, Anne has just looked over my shoulder at the
graphic on my computer screen, which I am preparing to accompany this
article. Noting (with a twinkle in her eye!) the smaller girth to my waistline
when we were at May and Seth’s Golden Anniversary in 1987. Then
compounding this felonious remark with a comment about there being hips
as well!... I do love her!

Have a great Unitarian 2023 Everybody! It was great to be with you all at
Christmas!

Anne & Ian