The old boys congregate at Gazes each Friday, for the crack. They’re a hardy lot and stand outside, east wind prevailing or water sun, some smoking a pipe. Their mundane tools of trade, their plough, wooden ladder, cattle feeders are here elevated from muddy field to antiques or architectural salvage for a sculpture in a garden or an interesting prop for a clematis to grow up.
Their joints stiff, their laughter quick, their eyes content to land or look at the stuff or us, as they exchange the tale, remember when. Retired labourers they watch the cycle turn, the fashions change. Rows of ties and hats once part and parcel of a status as mobile phones or iPads now. Inside the sheds boxes underneath the tables of jumble of lives, mixed together now: a music stand, Turkish slippers bought from a souk, once exotic now on eBay. Do you remember the time when? And as they puff their pipe or drink hot tea, they remember when as boys they wore that hat, just as they know their stuff too will land there one day.
All that remains, the utensils, machinery, decorations of our corporal homes, on a mantle piece above a hearth that once burned a fire. Now 1/6 or Lot 322. Round and round.
March 2013
Kalikellett 