A rewarding and productive day in The View from the Terrace

After several days of bad weather and also 3 days running waking with a migraine, I was really happy to wake yesterday morning feeling well and pain free and to see that the sun was shining. I spent the morning as usual doing my household chores, twenty minutes yoga and about a half hour practising my singing and guitar. I do these things in the morning when Hubby is out and I have the house to myself.

I usually do my yoga to John Denver’s music and have recently really got into the song ‘We Don’t Live Here no More’ it’s a very relaxing peaceful song, perfect for yoga. It reminds me of when our family left our home town of Shrewsbury. My parents kept a pub and the chorus of the song goes

‘Then empty the ashtray. sweep up the floor
Put a lock on your door.
If somebody calls in the morning
Just say we don’t live here no more.

That always make me think of closing time and also of the final leaving.
Yesterday I was inspired to write a poem about my dad’s last night there.

I spent the afternoon in the garden. I planted the michaelmas daisies that I bought at the garden centre last week.

Later we went to a local petrol staion where they sell flowers and for £4 I got a tray of 6 pansies in yellow and white to go with the violets that I got at the garden centre, a pretty pink cyclamen to go with the white ones a friend gave to Hubby and a bundle of wallflowers.

When I got home I planted some of the wallflowers in the border by the house. I have ordered some big purple and white striped crocus and there are already primula in there and hopefully the forget me nots have self seeded so the border should look pretty in the spring.

My neighbour, Darren came out and told me that 2 of our cats are spending most evenings in their house. I was pleased to hear that as they won’t come in here while we have the dog. They come for their food and then off they go. He said he loved our cats as they sit on your lap and their own cat is a nasty bad tempered thing spitting at our cats. I pointed out that he probably had a right to do that as it is his territory! Darren told me about his sick chicken. It had stopped eating and is just ‘feathers and bone’. They are feeding it with a syringe. He said ‘You probably think we are mad’ but I didn’t as my daughter once hand raised a kitten the same way after my son found it at work when it’s mother had been killed. Actually she was the mother of the 2 that are spending the evenings in their house.I thought they are lovely people. The chickens are rescued battery ones that they are trying to give them few months of happy life. He said they are probably getting a dog next year so maybe their cat will come into our house then!

This is the poem about Dad’s last night at our pub

The Last Night at the Masonic Arms

The rooms were silent now.
The last customer had gone singing down the road;
The last pint pulled; the last glass washed.
Soon he would go upstairs to spend a final night in his bedroom.
His wife, daughter and mother were gone to the new house;
He was alone in the big empty pub with just the dog for company.

They had been happy here,
First helping his parents run the place,
Then later it had become their own.
His daughter had been born here.
His father, once the landlord, had died here.
They had come back from the church to the packed wake in the bar
And the customers had reminisced about Fred,
And then the news had come that May had died.
Another one time landlady gone to join the brother she loved
A Brinkworth had kept this pub for thirty five years.

But tomorrow all of that would end.
He would take the dog, lock the door and walk to the new house.
He would have time now to tend his garden,
To take the dog out for long walks,
To take his family out for drives at the weekend,
But he would miss this place;
He would miss being the ‘guvnor’
He would miss being an important part of the community.

He hung up the wet tea towel
Wiped the tables and emptied the ashtrays for the last time.
He locked the main door and went up the stairs to bed,
To dream of his new life in retirement.

He would be up at first light,
He had always been an early riser.
He would put the lead on the dog, lock up for a final time
And by the time the milkman called
He wouldn’t live here anymore.

Last updated September 18, 2015