"The Naming of Things" The Simple Things Magazine May Edition
The Naming of Things
Across the blustery, daffodil strewn garden, I can see that the post van has paused outside the gate. A weathered elbow perches on the open window,
“ Oh, you must be the new tenant, that’s lucky. Gorgeous day! You are just so lucky to have this view. Lucky puppy too! ”
She smiles at my new companion and waves her arm at the landscape behind her. She sees a patchwork of fields; hedges studded with hypericum, sprinkled with pale primroses, all the way across to the hazy smudge of the bluebells in the copse in the distance. “Must get on!” she calls and leaves me, nodding, clutching the envelopes and catalogues. I stare hard at the view. I see little of value, just farmers’ fields and grey clouds seeping across the edges of the sky.
The puppy pulls at the lead. Are you lucky? I ask her. She is the rescue puppy: the puppy that needed rescuing. I reach down and stroke her inside out ear. It is pink, soft and vulnerable. I fold it over neatly for her, we go inside and I dump the letters on the table. Decisions on where to put things, what to call things have not been made.
I stand at the window and watch the rain clouds spread. A tap drips. The clock ticks. I find the lead that she arrived with, and open the back door. Everything sounds far away: birds sing; a plane flies over; the hum of a playground at break in the distance. The clouds burst as we cross the back -fields and we run together through the downpour. I feel different: more alive; more awake.
Back at home, I put the last of the daffodils that I gathered from the garden into an old blue jug. I put it on the kitchen table and open the letters. I make coffee, turn the computer on and find that I can work for the first time since we arrived. She sleeps curled at my feet, her chin on my ankle.
We repeat this routine daily. We plunge outdoors whatever the weather. We walk deliberately, stopping to sniff and examine everything we see or smell. She likes lampposts and bins, I like flowers and hedgerows.We bring home daffodils, lily of the valley and fistfuls of bluebells. I save jam jars and we pick up unwanted jugs from the local market to put them in. I put away my thick coat and wear my yellow mac, buy a ball, a green leather collar, wellingtons and walking boots.
Lucky barks and runs to the gate. Sue is leaning out of her van as usual. She hands me some eggs and tells me how the bantams are now laying generously after a long winter. Lucky jumps up to say hello, leaving dirty prints on the dusty van. I hand her a coffee and we pause in our working day, looking at the view. I see all the treasure of green fields and spring sunshine, as far as the eye can see.
Harriet Derioz is a writer from the West Country. Her simple things are her rescue dog, Toots, a stout pair of walking boots and the South West Coastal Path.
