Good afternoon, Everybody, are you fine? Do come in and have a seat. There’s tea, coffee, mincey pies and Trude’s, awe inspiring, brownies. You simply must try one…
This week I put the tree up. So, let’s sit next to her and inhale her piney perfume while we listen to the next instalment of the Little Houses saga…
Living on the Edge 216; Underneath the Arches…
This is an odd tale. Boyce didn’t share it very often as it tended to make folk uneasy. Although they tried not to make it obvious, he noticed them slowly edge away from him as he unwrapped his story to them.
I’m going to tell you, not because I want to spread rumours or because I think Boyce is strange but, because I think you will understand and find it illuminating.
Once upon a time, a great hurried steam train rushed overhead and through the countryside many times a day; juddering the residents of the tiny villages and connecting them to all the elsewheres, great and small, across the land. This was long before the fall of the railways though.
Nowadays, a handful of large dwellings resided underneath the arches of the ruined viaduct. They weren’t what Boyce called friends. They were very busy buildings, always otherwise occupied with some bustle or other. Boyce had tried to befriend them but found them rather self-important, cold and hoity- toity so he’d given up.
Their loss, thought Boyce, and he comforted himself with the thought that, when he did finally find a friend, he had something fabulous to share with them. He knew a secret… A marvellous secret…
You see, if you climb to the top of the viaduct at twilight on a Tuesday, you can board a train that will spirit you away. Yes, that’s right, completely away, away. It could be anywhere… A present-day place, a distant place in another time, you can never tell where you will find yourself. But it didn’t matter because, wherever and whenever, it was always wonderful and Boyce arrived home happy with greater insight into why things are as they are… xxx
Amongst a gaggle of others, this piece is currently hanging out with the glorious Byard Art xxx