AA book of the new sun

I like to avoid 'Today I did...' posts for much the same reasons that I avoid the Telegraph supplement - in certain broken states of mind they're just no fun at all.

However, today I abetted Ma in guerilla tree-planting and got to ask a bloke in a hardware shop for 'fork handles'.

Hardware-bloke didn't boot me out of his nice shop, but instead suggested I try West Midland Farmers Countrywide[1] in Bourton. Which was odd. I still feel like (even more of) an effete imposter in places like that. As if someone in a Tattersall shirt is going to beetle up and go 'Oi! You in the fecking climbing boots! Put that down and bugger off! There's nothing for you here!'

On the other hand, you can't beat shops that smell of chainsaw oil and cattle-cake.





[1] Which, I don't know. A great wedge of my childhood certainties vanished when WMF, Midland Shires Farmers and Aubrey Rees of Cirencester vanished when I wasn't looking. I mean, I remember being up at Reeseses with the parents (fetching hydraulic oil or parts for one of the I-H tractors) when someone steamed into the place going 'Concorde!'. Everyone piled outside to watch the pointy-and-smoking aircraft from the future howl overhead on final approach to Fairford.

I've written before about the feeling that something is actively removing the things I think I remember from the collective understanding.

I don't know who the hell I'm supposed to be right now.

Oh. Yeah. The reason I was after fork-handles is that I aim to repair a slasher[1] that belonged to Pa.

Were this some dreadful mid-afternoon teevee film, you could probably construct a suitably mawkish narrative.

Or, y'know, go 'Bloody woodworm's been at that. It'll want a new handle, then it'll be right as ninepence.'


[1] A grass hook on a long handle, basically. Not the thing from the internet.