The quick-witted and trenchant reaction to pandemonium of Dylan Pugh

The thing is my darlings, I have to say, I just don’t know how we would have got through last Thursday morning without Dylan Pugh. Indeed, I have still as it is been simply too distracted to write anything whatsoever, even here in my diary, which ought to be a discipline as I think you will surely agree.

Well!

It all started at about 5 o’clock on Thursday morning. Henry and I had just returned from our world cruise (only a short one – it’s such a small world nowadays isn’t it, as everybody keeps remarking) and we had intended upon a little lie-in.

Now personally I had not been disturbed in the slightest – that is until my sleep was shattered by a thunderous exclamation of ‘Sink me!!’ from the region of the balcony. I raised myself somewhat groggily upon my pillows. Groping for my lorgnette and simultaneously fumbling for my torch, I combined the use of these to discern and illuminate dear Henry’s scarlet dressing gown billowing wildly merged in with the voile and gold silk of our bedroom curtains upon the wave of an incoming gust of wind, the balcony window being apparently thrown open. Fearing the worst (though unclear what that might in fact be), I quavered ‘Henry?’ and he appeared,in the dressing gown, through the balcony window, inexplicably clutching what by squinting I discerned in the torchlight, moonbeams and beginnings of the dawn to be binoculars. They must have been to hand on the ottoman, as the things from our brief holiday were not yet all tidied away.

‘Were you taking a little air, my darling?’ I enquired.

‘Odds fish, woman!’ he boomed in response, which I must say I found a little terse, even given the hour of the morning: ‘Damnee, what do you take me for – a fitness fanatic?!’ (anyone who has seen Henry in nothing but a dressing gown would instantly discern the humour of this rhetorical interrogative)

‘No darling,’ I replied, with what I felt to be remarkable forbearance at so early an hour: ‘then what are you doing out on the balcony?’

‘The blasted garden’s full of sheep!’ said he. ‘I heard shouting “blehh” and “buuurrr” and “baaaaw” and got up to look.’

Have you ever been to Bolton Abbey Church? It is most amusing. There are sheep all round about, and during the sermon one can hear them. The effect bears an uncanny resemblance to Prime Minister’s Question Time at the House of Commons: ‘Hear! hear!... Booo… hahaha…. Hear! hear!’ and so forth. It’s hilarious: adds no end to the sermon. But I digress.

‘Come in, Henry,’ said I in crisp tones, being now sufficiently awake to be in command of the situation, ‘and don some more suitable apparel.’

So Henry, grumbling a little, put on his long johns and my cardigan, and rushed down to investigate the sheep. Feeling that some moral support could improve things, I threw a negligee swiftly about my shoulders, and without stopping even to pin up my hair, I made haste to follow him, dashing first up to the top of the house to bang on Mrs Swann’s door in case she could be helpful. It was still dark.

All this activity made a considerable amount of noise, and as I thundered down the stairs I glanced back to see Mrs Swann emerging wild-eyed and tremulous from her attic (I must ask her where she purchases those voluminous black night-dresses – so striking) at the same time as Eustacia and Ponty flung open their bedroom doors crying respectively: ‘Mummy! For heaven’s sake!’ and ‘What’s up, Mater? Burglars?’

I think Mrs Swann took the latter remark as an assertion rather than a query, because she began to scream hysterically. Then she missed her footing and fell down the stairs.

‘See to her, Eustacia!’ I commanded sharply: ‘Ponty – come and deal with the sheep!’

Ponty came rolling out in his Hawaiian boxer shorts and that ridiculous T-shirt of his that says 667 – NEIGHBOUR TO THE BEAST and bare feet. Well – to be fair we were all in bare feet except Henry who had on one carpet slipper like a terrible parody of Cinderella. Dimly, as we clattered though the front door into the garden, I heard Eustacia making a call on her mobile phone, saying loudly ‘Yes! Ambulance! Directly!’ It seemed a wee bit extreme and then I was seized with alarm – perhaps Mrs Swann had injured herself; possibly fatally?

The garden was indeed swarming with sheep.

Henry was creeping up on them, hoping to head them off towards that gap where they get in. Seeing his strategy, I sidled to the west, to block possible egress through the yews. In case you are having this read to you, may I clarify I am referring to topiary not females? All would have been well I believe, had Ponty not left the door open when he followed me out. He surged into the fray, whirling his arms energetically and shouting ‘Shooooooo!!! Shooooooo!!!’ This is never effective with sheep.

In the first glimmer of the dewy dawn, I saw the first signs of panic in their vague pale forms – then the flock broke and they began to dash crazily back towards the house.

Distracted momentarily by the sound of an ambulance siren and a blue light flashing in the lane, I did not see what caused Henry to bellow: ‘Confounded idiot boy! Nincompoop! You blethering incomparable half-brained nitwit!’ – until I turned round to behold the last woolly rump entering the house.

We dashed in after them. This panicked them even more. One ran downstairs and I heard a cry (Cook – I recognized her voice), most of them mobbed the drawing room: six tackled the stairs.

Taking two stairs at a time, even at fifty-two and in a negligee, I followed in hot pursuit. Gentle reader, when I breasted the rise and came level with the landing, on the left I heard Eustacia saying Hail Marys with Mrs Swann (she is Polish, I believe – Roman Catholic at any rate, and very devout), while ahead of me came histrionic bleating from our bedroom.

Standing in the doorway then, I surveyed the scene. All six sheep stood tightly together on our bed, facing me in a defiant phalanx. The curtains billowed dramatically in the night wind. A cloven ovine foot had inadvertently made contact with Henry’s projection clock that I gave him last Christmas, casting eerie purple data up onto the ceiling (5.21am).

‘Hermione!’ roared the voice of my beloved from the hall: ‘it’s the ambulance men for Mrs Swann!’

Dylan Pugh is not normally residential with us. I have no idea what he was doing in Sybil’s bedroom, and I shall not enquire. He is Henry’s personal secretary – a paragon of efficiency and unflappable in every circumstance. On this occasion he switched on the light in the passageway, and directed the ambulance men to Mrs Swann and Eustacia, who was calling ‘Here! We are here!’ in the near-dark of the attic stairs; then he appeared at my side, not as in his photograph at the top on this entry, but wearing an eau de nil silk wrap that is definitely Sybil’s. He gestured to me to move aside somewhat, in the direction of the wardrobe. I obeyed. Calling seductively in a low crooning voice, while rattling some kind of cereals in a bucket, he tempted the sheep. Nervous at first, and distrustful, they hesitated. But greed and curiosity overcame them, and they followed him like the Pied Piper of Hamlin down the stairs.

Pugh then took charge of the stray still blundering destructively round the kitchen, ejecting it through the scullery door into the yard, instructed Cook to make tea, and lured the drawing room party back into the wild.

He recommended Henry and me to adjourn until morning to the guest suite, which we gratefully did, and never have I so felt so deeply appreciative in sipping a restorative cup of Earl Grey.

Pugh dealt with Mrs Swann’s situation (she was shaken, but not injured beyond a degree of bruising), gave the ambulance men tea as well, and phoned out for a team of trouble-shooting cleaners to rectify the wreckage before elevenses, by which time Henry and I were ready to face the day (we took breakfast in our room on a tray).

I am so grateful to Dylan Pugh for his masterful intervention. He really is a gem. But though I expanded upon his incisive and enterprising action to Henry in the most glowing terms, I thought it best to gloss over how he came to be in our midst at five o’clock on a Thursday morning.

The Thieving Cow

My neighbour came to visit me today. We are so very much out in the sticks here that hardly anybody just drops by – apart from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Reverend Coleshaw Grimm of course, upon whom one can rely absolutely for assiduous devotion to duty. The nearest building is the Thieving Cow at the end of the village, a public house that Hermann and Gerda Backfatt took over two years ago.

I believe they advertise home-cooked food as one of their attractions, and I think Mrs Backfatt first began to call here to purchase some of Sybil’s herbs for her chef. The cooking herbs I mean, of course, not the other ones – at least, I assume so.

And then Mrs Backfatt seemed to take to us rather, and pops in from time to time when her full schedule permits - for running a public house is indeed no small venture, and the Thieving Cow is immensely popular. She is very frank and sometimes surprising in her conversation. Last time she was here, she gradually inclined in my direction until she resembled the leaning tower of Pisa on the verge of a landslide and whispered in the tones of a coy conspirator that she had been to Knightsbridge to purchase a strapless brassica. I felt a little nonplussed for a moment, but I hope my face did not betray any bewilderment.

Today she was brimming over with excitement, wanting to share her news, poor thing – her husband is a more taciturn individual: approaching the concrete bollard level in fact; abnormally under-vivacious. Anyway dear Mrs Backfatt practically shoved Ellis into the door-jamb in her haste to enter the drawing room.

‘What do you think?’ she cried as she swarmed in my direction (Eustacia had to leap adroitly to prevent an upset of the tea-table): ‘Bärbel’s poinsettia has had nine puppies! Nine!’

Eustacia and I nodded and smiled in delighted amazement: ‘Nine is a lot for a poinsettia,’ Eustacia volunteered; ‘do you have any photographs yet?’

Eustacia can really be very tactful, when she tries.

Apparently there will be photographs when the bitch will let them near. Poinsettias, Mrs Backfatt assured us, can be astonishingly possessive.

My darling Henry

Today, I feel so terribly tired. They say, don’t they that seventy is the new forty? Today I feel as though the fifties are the new eighties. I look in the mirror, and this slightly cynical patient lizard with its watchful eyes and straw wig looks back at me. ‘Good morning,’ I say; and the lizard mouths the same words back at me.

My darling Henry came home yesterday evening. Things always feel more right in themselves when he is home. There is something uncannily comforting about Henry.

This last month or two he has been back and forth to New York and Washington and Berlin, sorting things out and making the world run properly. I have not the faintest idea, in truth, what this entails; apart from aeroplane flights and well-pressed suits, and a remarkable stamina for board meetings. Part of Henry’s ethical outlook is his belief that one should work for one’s living – actually for real money I mean, not only contributing usefully to the executive processes of charitable foundations and whatnot, though of course Henry does that too. So he spends a great deal of time attending things and making decisions; giving permission for people’s lives and commercial ventures to begin, or end, or change direction. I am not quite sure how many companies Henry owns or directs – a lot I think, but I suppose it might even be none at all; I have not even the most tenuous grasp of these matters. Simply being alive at all and remembering to be polite and figuring out how to get both legs of my stockings on without getting them twisted has always seemed challenge enough for me.

Anyway, dear Henry is home for the weekend, which is simply lovely. I always look forward to him coming back so very, very much; life slips into its socket again if you see what I mean. Even so, it can be a little alarming at seven o’clock in the morning, when I am sitting in bed sipping Earl Grey tea in a tranquil manner, watching a flight of birds through the window, and Henry enquires briskly: ‘So! What’s on the agenda today?’

‘Agenda?’ I quaver weakly. Henry takes in at a glance that there is no future in pursuing this line of enquiry; so he outlines for me the projects he has in mind for his own itinerary – usually enough to fully occupy a short month (February, I suppose).

After a little while his own enthusiasm sort of loops back and re-infects itself, and he goes bounding off to the shower: then bursts in upon Cook to check up on the progress of breakfast. After he has dressed, of course.

And then I don’t really see him any more. From time to time he comes blowing into the drawing room, or wherever I am, in search of important papers, or his spectacles, or needing me to jog his memory – the name of the man who bred our dogs or the disease that Aunt Fenella died of; that sort of thing. Sometimes we take lunch together, though I prefer to have a tray on the sofa; a little smoked salmon and cream cheese on an oatcake while I leaf through this week’s copy of The Lady, looking at the pictures mainly – words are so draining, don’t you think?. Henry usually lunches in the dining room surrounded by horseradish and chutney and Gentleman’s Relish and pickles, eating crunchy things very fast because his mind is already galloping wildly through the late afternoon and he has to catch up.

We often eat fish for dinner. Apart from Sybil, who prepares her own slightly unusual concoctions. I must say, Cook is very patient with us.

There comes a moment when after much wrestling effort, Henry and his day fall apart exhausted: at which point he turns on the television for the news, pours himself a whisky, and falls asleep.

I make my way back to my dear snuggly nest at about ten o’clock. I like to keep the curtains drawn back, so I can see the moon and the stars and the clouds. So beautiful. I lie and watch them, eventually drifting off to sleep. After an hour or so Henry tiptoes in and puts the light on, clatters around a little as quietly as he can, blows his nose and whatnot, finally leaning across to give me a goodnight kiss of great affection before settling down to one of these rather sophisticated political novels: ‘Goodnight my sweet darling,’ he says. I do love Henry.

After a while I usually drift slowly off to sleep again in the lamplight. Henry reads until he is sleepy and then turns off the light. He finds it hard to get comfortable nowadays – it’s middle age you see, it’s not the new twenty-one whatever they may say. So he grunts and rootles around a bit and grapples with his pillows, eventually getting them straight. He begins to drift off to sleep then, but I find one can only have so many goes at it before drifting off to sleep loses its edge. So I watch the moon. After a while (this happens every night, it’s extraordinary, I’m sure a homoeopath would have something to say) Henry suddenly begins to cough. He gropes about for his carafe and knocks his watch onto the floor, and has to put the light on to retrieve it and pour himself a glass of water. This usually does the trick, and he subsides again, re-organises his pillows and starts to drift off to sleep. At this juncture, leg cramps usually strike him, and poor Henry has to jump out of bed and pace around a little, pausing to stand on tiptoe or stretch out one leg from time to time. With a certain amount of determination he is usually able to defeat the cramp, and he snuggles down again and gives me another loving little kiss: ‘Goodnight my dearest,’ he says. Darling Henry. What would I do without him?

He tussles with his pillows for a while and finally gets them straight, turning over with a deep sigh and pulling the duvet around him. In that moment I have to be almost convulsively quick to grab the corner of the quilt before it is whisked away from my side of the bed. I hold onto it firmly then, as I lie watching the clouds drift across the face of the moon.

I listen as Henry’s breathing deepens from its normal tense wakefulness down to relaxation, then into snoring.

The snoring is interesting and varied. Some nights it’s that guttural, semi-gurgling snortle located in the region of the pharynx, or soft palate at least: I believe that must require an open mouth, but one can never absolutely confirm the veracity of this hunch in the dark. Some nights it’s more of a slow, deep, in-drawing snortle alternating with a coy little ‘ptui!’ on the outbreath. I listen, and I watch the moon moving across the sky, and eventually sleep draws me down into the dark blue velvet silence.

And before I know it, the morning has come; the indeterminate beauty of the dawn, and a cup of Earl Grey tea, and a tender little kiss from darling Henry, who wonders what my schedule (!) will be this new day.

My dear, dear Henry. I admire him so, and he is such a marvelous person; so accomplished and important and so devastatingly busy. I wish I could write with more insight and intelligence about the kind of person he is: but at least I have been able to describe the bits I see.

Such interesting views from the train

This morning I received a couple of messages from Eustacia on my mobile telephone. She had an idle moment while she sat waiting for the up train, which seemed to be inexplicably delayed. The first message came in the form of a photograph she had taken (with her telephone, apparently! Amazing!) of the café outside our little railway station here in the Sussex countryside. On the large white fascia-board of this emporium appears in uncompromising orange letters (Mistral) the legend:

ALPHA CAFE
& coffee shop

Eustacia’s second communication, a text message this time, referring presumably to the sign in the photograph, said simply: ‘Two for the price of one! What a bargain!’

Two for the price of one? Oh! I suppose she means because it is both a café and a coffee shop. But surely….

I wonder if she is being sarcastic?

Eustacia has been travelling everywhere by train since she lost her driving license after that unfortunate business last year, which really seemed most unfair to me. Well, Ponty or whoever is going that way takes her out to the station of course, but apart from that she is quite independent.

She tells me (Eustacia has such a sense of fun) that the two best ways of fare-hopping are either to pick up used tickets dropped carelessly by other travelers and stow them about one’s person in pockets, purse and handbag, searching frantically among them for today’s ticket if the inspector comes round (thus giving the impression of being an honest soul who regularly purchases tickets), meanwhile exhibiting mounting feminine distress: or travelling with a companion in two separate carriages having bought one ticket between you, in the possession of the traveler nearest where you have observed the guard to be on boarding the train. The first person offers the ticket for inspection when asked to do so, then moves down the train, passing the inspector, to give the ticket to her accomplice. She says in both cases it is important to conduct oneself in a demure, even prim, fashion, and wear neat, nondescript clothing and not too much make-up. And look vague. I have no idea how Eustacia came across these details of criminal behaviour: perhaps she read about it in a novel.

Oh! She has just sent me some more photographs of the trees so beautiful in shades of crimson, russet and gold – and one of a pheasant standing on top of a farm gate. Sussex is truly the most beautiful place on God’s Earth, and one of the best ways to see it is from the train. I wonder what those two people in the photograph are doing in that dell under the trees there. Goodness me, how extraordinary! Well, I never! Some people have no sense of propriety!

Cook - such a brick!

Here’s a quick snap that I took of dear Cook looming over her mixing bowl: such a wholesome-looking person, don’t you think? She has been with us since absolutely forever and is so wonderfully patient with our funny little ways. Let me tell you, we do have some foibles in this house, and Cook is always so accommodating!


Darling Gussy of course is not much of a problem as yet, being fed only Aurora’s actual own milk, but we are all braced for next month when it will be time for his gastronomical adventures to begin; because Aurora has been reading about Child-Led Weaning, and explained to us (this is important and very serious) that speech therapists have discovered we could impair his oral function for ever should we attempt to fed him with a spoon. Aurora has explained to us that the correct procedure is to lay down a large dust sheet at each meal, and serve him his food at his high chair – mashed banana, or yoghourt, or puréed fruit or creamed vegetables or porridge or whatever else is suitable for a baby, and respect Gussy’s ability to feed himself; initially using his hands, moving on to a spoon or knife and fork when he reaches the age of being able to manipulate them.


The text book from which Aurora took this interesting information did explain that in the course of weaning the baby’s high-chair would be materially compromised and possibly written off – turned into a kind of Tate Modern installation layered with the results of infant experimentation as the art of eating slowly establishes.


When I was in my twenties I had a very idealistic friend, an anthroposophist, who was determined to bring her children up to be natural, free, and unsullied by the terrible constraints of ignorant civilization. Henry and I were invited to dinner with this friend and her dear husband and two young children – Cinnamon Leaf aged 5 and Poseidon aged 2 – during the time that they lived in one of those darling little back-to-back houses in the north of England, still with an outdoor privy in those days. While Aphrodite and Derek were preparing our repast, Cinnamon Leaf took us proudly on a tour of their small home: all the usual features of a domestic interior were there to see – unmade beds, chaotic drifts of intermingling clean and dirty laundry, curtains half closed and clinging approximately by the last surviving hooks to their tracks, temple guardians standing watchfully at the head of the stairs, kelims forming mini mountain ranges on the floor, toys scattered randomly: and in the tiny bedroom dominated by the bunk beds festooned with organic wool blankets and occupied at night by Cinnamon Leaf and Poseidon: a rather replete potty. Naturally we made no comment, but Cinnamon Leaf paused to gaze meditatively at the potty and then announced with profound pride, ‘Those are my turds’. And no doubt they were.


Dinner did not go so awfully well. We sat down as a family to eat. In those days I was a passionate vegetarian, and had neglected to mention this to Aphrodite when she invited us. She had roasted a joint of meat. I tried to make light of this, saying the lovely vegetables looked simply splendid and would be just the ticket: but I can still see Aphrodite looking at me with eyes full of sorrow, saying, ‘Not even bio-dynamically grown meat?’ Even these thirty or so years later I feel quite peculiar to look back on the memory, and I shudder to think what proportion of their weekly income that joint must have cost her.


Perhaps little Poseidon sensed a certain tension in the atmosphere, or perhaps he was merely employing his regular table manners, but the meal progressed with difficulty, as he had a large dish of chopped-up spaghetti bolognaise (biodynamically grown beef and tomatoes, home-grown herbs and wholewheat pasta) which he picked up in handfuls, squidged in a sensual kind of way, and then flung at us. His dear mama remonstrated weakly from time to time, but that only caused him to roar – persistently and impressively. We were glad to go home.


When Aurora mentioned child-led weaning, the memory of that night flashed through my mind, and I mentioned the possibility that though Gussy seems to be a gentle and co-operative infant, he might feel the urge to toss his stewed apple around a bit. Aurora became defensive. She is never as icy as my sister, but I know when I have been warned off. She explained to me that she was aware of that, and that the surfaces splattered with baby-food could be wiped down after each meal: this was the price one paid for responding appropriately to infant development.


Later, Mrs Swann had a little word with me (she had been dusting in the hallway at the time and overheard snatches of our conversation, enough to become very alarmed). I could see she was starting to tic. I did what I could to soothe her, and said that Gussy would just have to take all his meals in Cook’s pantry until he has become master of his knife and fork and open to reason. This seemed to reassure Mrs Swann, but I have yet to gather the courage to lay the situation, on us in a month now, before Cook.


My own children were all spoon-fed by their nanny (or at least I assume they were and the nursery always seemed very clean and tidy even directly after tea), and I must say they have grown up to be incomparably articulate, but who knows what they might have been without such impairment to combat? Ventriloquists or News Presenters or something, who can say?


So I am girding up my loins to broach the matter with Cook, and I can see I shall have to be jolly careful to select a highchair designed with aerodynamic lines and absolutely no fabric and not too many twiddly ‘adjust this and that’ projecting knobs and surfaces resistant to absorbing the spectacular stains that organic vegetable juices are capable of inflicting (as I discovered when I dropped a small dollop of creamed carrot on my ivory silk blouse last Wednesday). Perhaps we could have a highchair carved out of one piece of wood, sanded and varnished to a smooth finish, and fitted with vinyl covered cushions. Hmm. I will ask Ellis to do some research on the internet. It should be possible. Sussex is simply heaving with people who do clever things with wood.


Anyway, I am sure Cook will rise to the occasion. She always does if she can. She helped Sybil make those special herby rock-cakes for the chapel tea where we all had such a happy time, and she always lets her come into the pantry to do her sloe gin ready for Christmas – she has known them all since they were born, and I believe they have a special place in her heart.


Aurora herself, who was born during my vegan phase and so ate mainly raw fruit and vegetables and lentil stews, was given much freedom to feed herself at Gussy’s age. She would sit up in her beech-wood highchair with an array of raisins and pieces of apple (later, pieces of cheese too, when we returned to vegetarianism) and torn-up scraps of bread, and put them slowly one after the other into her mouth, until her face bulged with food much like a hamster. ‘Aurora darling, you must chew and swallow!’ Nanny would cry in alarm, and make her spit it all out and start afresh. Nobody ever promised us bringing up children would be easy.


There. I have entered it in my desk diary: discuss Child-Led Weaning with Cook. I expect Mrs Swann will have prepared her for the conversation.

Welcome home my poor darling - welcome home!

Of course the really super thing about this particular week is Sybil coming home tomorrow. I cannot pretend that it has not been an anxious time while she has been away, and a sorrow to me – so beastly unfair.

After the dreadful business of her divorce from the odious Arkwright, she was so marvelously positive and brave. She went through a time of being just a teeny bit unhinged naturally enough; how would you feel if your own husband dragged you through the courts and had you branded as an unfit mother? Henry took her himself out to The Priory for a little rest – they have such lovely gardens there, don’t they; just the thing for someone who has come unstuck for a moment. Sybil saw such a nice person there who thought she could benefit from a more structured approach, and suggested she might like to stay for a while – so she did, and it was simply marvelous I must say. Sybil seemed so calm and rational when she came home, and I think she enjoyed her regular trips out there on a Thursday afternoon.

One always feels so proud of one’s children when they are not content simply to exist as mere barnacles freeloading their way through an indolent life: and I thought Sybil’s herb project was just the thing for her – I mean, everyone one knows of the therapeutic power of herbs.

The fabulous face creams and bath oil preparations she made were too heavenly; and I just loved having those rows and rows of lavender bushes, as well as the field of roses she planted just beyond the lake. Things were going so well and Henry was delighted to have a few greenhouses built for her beyond the rose field there, and more than happy to have electricity laid on so that she could germinate her seedlings and regulate the growth of some of her exotic plants. Naturally we didn’t interfere – it was Sybil’s own special project and she was so happy and excited about it all.

She had special blinds fitted in her greenhouses, because her plants needed periods of light and periods of complete darkness, and whenever I went wandering down there to smell the glorious fragrance of her roses I was amazed to see the wonderful leafy growth in the greenhouses – her plants were almost as tall as me, tremendous frondy things!

And poor Sybil did work so very hard. Every evening she would be looking things up on the internet, and she used to come home laden with bottles of plant feed, and her friends were forever coming round with bags of horse manure – they all took such an interest in what she was doing.

It was all just lovely: so positive and natural and productive. I really do think the police interfere with things far more than ever they need to in this country. I mean haven’t they got terrible murders to be solving? What about all these people who attack completely innocent individuals in the supermarket queue, and stick knives in their friends on the way home from school? But no – apparently things like that are beyond prevention and the Force is better occupied lurking in a side road to spot motorists going through an amber light or, as in this case, harmless women who like to garden a little bit on the wild side.

The worst thing of all – I mean we had absolutely no idea, I was just thrilled to see poor Sybil so purposeful and happy once again – was that it turns out it was somebody from the chapel who put through an anonymous telephone call to the police station! And my dear, before we knew it the whole place was alive with dogs and uniformed officers carrying flashlights – it was awfully late at night, so inconsiderate! And the drive looked like a gravel pit in the making by the time they’d all gone away.

All of them were so grim, taking notes and firing questions at us – none of them would take a cup of tea or a biscuit. There was a man walking up and down our terrace muttering ‘rubber duckie rubber duckie’ terribly earnestly into his walkie-talkie thing – and I don’t know if Ponty didn’t make matters rather worse by laughing. Just nerves, I expect.

My poor mother thought the worst thing was having DRUGS BUST AT BROCKHYRST PLACE – POLICE SEIZE 100 CANNABIS PLANTS on the publicity hoardings at the newsagent, with a photograph of Sybil being driven away in a Black Maria on the front page of the Daily Mail. Henry and I didn’t see it – we always take the Telegraph.

Then came all the waiting and the terrible ordeal at Lewes and even now I shudder to recall the day. I thank God it is all behind us now, and eight months after that awful day Sybil is coming home again. I am just so, so happy that she will be back with us tomorrow.

We were not sure what to do about the greenhouses. Henry thought she might like to have another go with tomatoes in the spring.

The Incomparable Mrs Swann

Mrs Swann is a wonder, she really is. She had been employed at an awfully big house in Windsor before she came to us, and I can tell you they were devastated when she left them. She needed the country air you see, and to live somewhere where she could walk by the sea and her eyes could rest upon distant hills, and she could hear the breeze in great trees; because poor Mrs Swann has very delicate nerves. She simply had to get out of Town, and Sussex has been just the place for her. Her little flat is at the very top of the house, so she can see the sunrise and live in a room full of light: Mrs Swann’s soul could not abide a basement. Even now of course she has those times when she disappears into her little apartment with a bottle of gin and we hear snatches of Leonard Cohen songs from behind her closed door, but see nothing of Mrs Swann for a fortnight. Then, bravely and quietly she is once more amongst us, with a sad, resigned expression on her face and a duster in her hand.

She makes this glorious furniture polish. There is usually an old jam jar with some in it, standing in her cupboard, and as soon as you open the door this absolutely celestial aroma wafts over you. Each batch is a little different: she mixes a third white spirit with two-thirds virgin olive oil, then adds lots of essential oils – whatever Eustacia feels inclined to make spare from her little stash. The most recent batch had half a bottle of patchouli oil and a hefty sprinkling of rose absolute. Every now and then she wanders about rubbing it into the furniture; and when Mrs Swann has been feeding (as she describes it) the doors and the bookcases, and Eustacia has been burning the Dalai Llama’s Blessing Incense, one feels Nirvana has taken two steps nearer.

One really hardly likes to confess to looking at daytime television, but if I am to be totally frank I must admit to curling up with a cup of cocoa on a dreary day to enjoy Kim and Agatha (or is it Agnes?) in How Clean Is Your House. The programme is marvelous and I do my level best not to become tyrannical with Mrs Swann under its rigorous influence.

Naturally the advertisement breaks that spasmodically appear in the course of the broadcast are heavily dominated by odes to cleaning products: and there is one that puzzles me no matter how often I see it – the one extolling the marvels of Cillit Bang. Let me be the first to make clear that I have not tried this product myself. It appears to dissolve virtually anything. I once had a rather beautiful woolen scarf with a cheery eastern design in reds and spice yellows and whatnot. I glued it to a potting tray to make a lid for the Desert Box when we were experimenting with Godly Play: later on when I wanted it back to wear I ripped it free with no trouble but it was plentifully marked with ugly and unyielding splodges of dried glue. I had a look in Mrs Swann’s special cupboard and found an uncompromisingly pink container labeled ‘Vanish’ – just the thing, so it said, for removing stains.

The basic information is all I ever feel inclined to discover, and I didn’t have my spectacles with me at the time, so I simply cannot pass on the possible content of the small print. I just squeezed a generous dollop or three into one of Cook’s mixing bowls, splashed in enough hot water to immerse the scarf, and left it there – for three weeks as it turned out, because I went on holiday forgetting all about it the next morning. I did think Cook or Mrs Swann or somebody might have had the gumption to rescue my poor scarf: but Cook was simply grumpy because I’d occupied (as it were) a mixing bowl for three weeks, and Mrs Swann pretended she had thought I was conducting an experiment.

The effect of the Vanish was remarkable. The glue stood firm: but when I started to rinse the scarf it began before my astonished eyes to dissolve! I have felt a deeper respect, bordering on wariness, for household cleaning products from that day.

We don’t have Cillit Bang anyway. Mrs Swann is more of a Borax and Bicarb bunny herself – I think she secretly watches How Clean Is Your House? in the privacy of her sitting room. I hope it doesn’t do anything to exacerbate her anxiety disorder.

But the advertisement on the television shows a buxom blonde person with extraordinarily white teeth flashing in an almost demented smile as she demonstrates the wonders of its strength. She insists that it dissolves limescale – and so it may do, but as here in lovely Sussex we have some of the softest water in the country this information didn’t have me convulsively reaching for my purse. The other things the ad bimbo revealed was the power of Cillit Bang to completely clear all the toothpaste from her washbasin. In fact she showed us. With one sweep of the cloth, all the toothpaste thickly daubed around the entire interior of her basin was eliminated.

The question that lingered in my mind, which intrigues me far more than the alchemical properties of Cillit Bang, is why the dickens any normal woman should devote time to smearing a thick layer of toothpaste around the sink? And a secondary question: is toothpaste normally thought to be difficult to remove?

Personally, I am always very careful not to be wasteful with the toothpaste. My mother brought me up to believe that, even if a person has been blessed with a fortunate position in this world, what we have is ours to steward wisely. This is how we show to God our appreciation: to celebrate the good things in life is our ‘Thank you!’ – to use them wantonly and inadvisedly is thoughtless ingratitude. As Christ said in the Bible: ‘From those to whom much is given, much will be expected’. This applies even to toothpaste – I don’t mean that if you have been given a lot of toothpaste somebody will want a lot of toothpaste back from you, like a terrible pharmaceutical Inland Revenue, I mean that good management extends down from the larger view to the smallest detail of our lives. The Lord sees.

Even so, we must be understanding and gentle in our judgement of others. Mrs Swann’s use of bleach, for example, is on occasion startlingly lavish, but only when her OCD has got the better of her. Then she stocks up with disposable wipes and mould and mildew spray, the entire building acquires the bracing air of a public swimming pool, and for a while all the lavatories flush blue. But when she is well, we go back to the Ecover multi-surface spray and everything begins to calm down.

In writing this I am reminded that it is far too long since poor Mrs Swann had a holiday. I see that The Lady has a competition at the present time to win a housekeeper for the Christmas period. I wonder if I might enter? Oh – while on the subject of The Lady: there has been a mighty pendulum swing. The editor announces herself ‘stung’ to have received correspondence accusing her of being a mouthpiece of the Tory party, and waxes passionate upon the subject of the universalist and non-partisan broad thinking of The Lady in every possible respect. An article on the menopause, a rather bohemian lesbian artist brandishing a cigarette, and a rash of female writers have been included this week to reassure us! I wonder what next week will bring? The Lady has become an altogether more exciting publication than the staid respectability of its former incarnation!