Windsor Street DaysGuest UserFebruary 02, 2025Meandering, WSD Part VI Ch 2Comment

WßD Meandering

Windsor Street DaysGuest UserFebruary 02, 2025Meandering, WSD Part VI Ch 2Comment

Windsor Street Days

Part VI

Chapter Two

Meandering

What seems aeons ago, a little boy was playing as happy as a lark with his sisters and cousins in a rather posh garden in Leamington Spa. The grown-ups were taking afternoon tea on the other side of the French windows, those windows equally posh with the diagonal pattern and lead framework, and the huge hydrangea bushes.

The large garden had a beautiful birdbath, and this inquisitive little boy decided he needed to see into the actual bath, the problem was he could barely see over it. So he decided to lever himself up and oh, the end of the world came, as the heavy stone circular bath crashed to the ground leaving its glorious pillar an inglorious stump!

The earth paused, the clocks stopped, the birds ceased to sing, even the wind gasped.

No. The grown-ups didn't seem to feel the earth shudder. And quick as lightning this little boy's elder sister Carol and his cousins all put their backs to the grown-ups and lifted it up and restored the birdbath to its pre-eminence, albeit minus the water. The winds heaved a sigh of relief and the birds began to sing again and the little boy vowed he'd never ever, ever, ever again touch a bird bath.

I don't think the grown-ups ever did find out, and today the bird bath sits in another very special garden in Gloucestershire, at the foot of which still sits the earless rabbit and the little boy.

I dedicate this book to my sisters Carol and Vanessa.

It seems this little boy has spent a lifetime up-turning bad birdbaths of one sort or another! But hey ho. The family always rallied as it has in 2011 when I confess, I really did think the end had come!

Written as the Dedication to Meanderings An Anthology of Poetry and Prose published in hardback in my author name in October 2011.