Chapter 6: Pesto in the Kitchen

       Skint Old Crafts: Stick It, Stitch It, and Stuff It

       Hint One: for those of you living south of Luton, I suggest you shred this magazine and reassemble it in a different order with Sellotape, since it will give you hours of fun and make just as much sense afterwards.

      I turned down the snowy track behind the Parsonage and slid to a halt, more by luck than judgement, next to the wall of the unseasonably named Summer Cottage.

      It’s more of a Hobbit hole in the hillside than anything, with the heavy bulk of the Parsonage threateningly poised above, ready to toboggan down the hill sweeping all before it.

      The front of the cottage now sported a ramshackle, half-glazed appendage, painted a vivid shade of Mediterranean blue. The door was in need of a second coat, for the word ‘Ladies’ could still faintly be seen, although I thought the heart-shaped cut-out very tasteful.

      Walter had excelled himself.

      I was just sniffling a few sentimental tears away when a voice as mellow and melodious as a cello suddenly addressed me from behind, making me jump and whirl around like a Dervish.

      ‘Are you responsible for that excrescence on the beautiful face of Upvale?’

      Icy fingers of Arctic wind undulated my numerous layers of loose black drapery, and I had to claw a web-fine woollen scarf out of my eyes before I could see the man who’d spoken.

      He was very tall, even taller than Em, and his dark, heavy-lidded eyes regarded me with a sort of weary wariness, as though I was a surprise gift he didn’t want. He was also carrying a giant teddy bear.

      ‘I don’t think a man who walks about wearing a red duvet and a jester’s hat has any right to criticise my cottage,’ I informed him coldly, although his strange garments didn’t actually look quite as ludicrous on him as they might sound, while my veranda, as Walter would call it, certainly did.

      I didn’t mention the teddy bear in case he was sensitive about it. Bran always takes his soft toy, Mr Froggy, everywhere in his pocket with him, but at least it’s small.

      ‘It’s ski-wear,’ he said, looking down his remarkably straight nose at me.

      ‘Not in Upvale it isn’t. You might as well have “Oft-Comed Un” stamped across your back; but I suppose you’re the actor – Em said we’d got one in the cottage down the track,’ I said, making him sound like a disease. ‘I don’t think she mentioned your name.’

      And the bit of him I could see, between upturned collar and pulled-down hat – high sculptured cheekbones and slightly slanting, droopy-lidded eyes – did look vaguely familiar, even to someone who rarely watched TV or films.

      ‘I’m incognito.’

      ‘It’s all right with me. I don’t expect the urge will come upon me to boast about meeting you. Or your teddy bear,’ I added, throwing caution to the winds.

      ‘My teddy bear?’ he echoed, looking at me strangely, but that might have been because my knitted coat was flying up behind me like black bat wings.

      ‘Am I not supposed to mention the teddy bear? It’s moving,’ I added, fascinated.

      Indeed, it was now not only moving, but muttering. The head turned and I saw a little face screwed up in sleep, framed by honey-brown fur and round ears. Then it snuggled back into the red duvet.

      What with that and the Mediterranean veranda I was starting to feel quite freaked. Upvale had always previously stayed the same, my one fixed constant in a threatening world. It was a relief when the actor edged past me without another word (unless you count what sounded like a muttered ‘Crackers!’) and strode off up the lane with his little furry friend.

      I prised my little furry friend out of her warm nest in the car, and she looked around her with a sort of vague surprise: the world had moved while she slept, again.

      The door key was in the mouth of the stone frog as usual, together with some small wooden tablets inscribed with what looked like runes, and a bunch of dried herbs. I left those where they were.

      We went through Walter’s Folly, and I opened the door of the cottage to be met and embraced by a warm miasma of lavender, furniture polish and bleach. There was no leftover redolence of mistress here, for Gloria Mundi had clearly excised every last iota of their existence. It simply smelled like home.

      Flossie pattered across the flagged floor behind me as I climbed the stairs up to the Parsonage kitchen and opened the strangely silent door.

      There was a delicious aroma, easily identified as steak and kidney pie with suet crust, and Em was sitting coring baking apples at the kitchen table, and plopping them into a big earthenware bowl of water.

      ‘You’ve come, then,’ she stated, without looking up from her task. ‘Put the kettle on – you must be frozen. Where’s Flossie?’

      With a wheeze like a small pair of bellows Flossie hauled herself up the last step, looking vaguely around, then made straight for the wood-burning stove in the corner like a shaggily upholstered heat-seeking missile.

      ‘She must be cold,’ said Em fondly. ‘I’ll warm her some milk.’

      ‘She isn’t cold – she’s been fast asleep in her igloo all the way here. I’m the one who’s absolutely brass-monkeyed, because I had to have the roof open for the plants. Where’s Walter?’

      As if on cue the door swung open and in hobbled a gnarled and cheery little goblin. The bridge of his over-large glasses had been bound with a great wodge of Sellotape, and his baggy corduroy trousers were held up by Father’s old school tie.

      ‘Hello, Walter,’ I said, giving him a kiss.

      ‘I’ve got no eyebrows.’

      ‘I know. How are you?’

      ‘No eyebrows. No bodily hair whatsoever!’ he proclaimed happily. ‘I’ve made you a veranda, and now I’m going to put your plants in it and make a jungle.’

      ‘It’s a wonderful veranda, Walter – it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. Thank