Downstairs Window

Downstairs Window

Rooms

Some doors open on a thickly-peopled air
Of moving shadows, those whose lives, long gone,
Were spent there....
Some on a waiting silence - of expectancy
For those to come; some to the musty smell
Of mere desuetude; and some in constancy
To the long loving years of sweet content
In which the light of sun and moon have blent
In lasting light that bids all dark farewell -
Of such will this room tell.

Mary Stella Edwards, 1962.

Thursday 6 May 2010

Day 10: Water (10 May 2010)


A caller came by who had holidayed in the Cabin as a child with her parents. She came every summer throughout the 1950s until 1963 courtesy of a special arrangement with Judith Ackland and Stella Edwards.
She remembered a water butt outside the door which always sprang a leak and said that drinking water was fetched from Maimie's kitchen in two black metal jugs with handles. The drinking water jugs had blue gingham covers.
She said that Maimie's flower was a paper poppy she had made herself in memory of a sweetheart who had gone to fight in Flanders. Maimie said she had promised to wear the poppy every day until his return.