Perhaps Stealing Is Sometimes Good...

The sun has been shining for the entire day...it's still cold though but everything seems so much brighter with blue skies and the sun streaming through the sitting-room windows showing up all the dusty surfaces.

Something I used to do when we first came home was to steal away the plaster Madonna's left on the window-sills and mantels of long deserted cottages...her pale blue robes long faded and her face pock-marked with birds droppings and wreathed in dust and spiders webs, I used to feel so sad for those cheap plaster statues. I'd bring them home and clean them up and wonder if they'd been a gift at a young couples wedding or if they'd been in a family for generations...then I read somewhere that families departing for America left their Madonna behind to guard their home until the day they were able to return...didn't take any more after finding that out.

That can rebound though...one day some years ago, I was up in the Ox mountains with a friend, when we came across a long deserted cottage. Out in the middle of nowhere it was... the back door stood slightly ajar...and inside was a time warp treasure trove. An old wind-up gramophone standing on the most exquisite small cabinet with tiny leaded glass doors...there was a rickety wooden ladder in one corner which led to a sleeping space in the roof...with an iron bedstead and a straw mattress...a huge Bakelite radio, and hanging over the hearth, a selection of cast iron griddles and pans.

Swallows were nesting in each corner of the sitting room...there was an enormous heap of twigs in the hearth from Jackdaws nests in the chimney and a Holy Water stoop by the back door which announced it was a souvenir from Knock...

Marie took a coat off a nail on the back door and startled mice tumbled out onto the floor...behind the coat was a mouldy leather dog collar.

There was a pile of tracts from the church on the dresser and Goose wings for dusting...platters for the big dinners at Christmas and clay pipes with small bowls in a pot...probably used at Wakes because they'd use less tobacco...a tin with loose tea still inside...the tin rusted and tea leaves clogged up into a lump.

We tip-toed round, exclaiming with each discovery...there was even a salt box, the contents long gone and several small paraffin lights...the type with a mirror at the back to reflect the light and make it brighter.

The temptation to take all those old things was great...but we didn't...we pulled the door back to where it was, still allowing the swallows access and then we went home.

About a year later Marie suggested we go back and salvage what we could...the cottage had gone. In its place was a Dallas type home complete with a set of those formidable gates that don't open unless you know the code. Right down close to the narrow road way was a heap of rubble...we looked at that and saw amongst the old stones and scraps of horsehair mortar...a mouldy dog collar and some swallows nests...pieces of brightly coloured glass from the little cabinet...broken china from those platters and small fragments of clay pipes...

Marie drove straight to the ocean and we walked awhile along the beach and then had hot Whiskeys at the thatched 'pub...neither of us have spoken of that cottage since.