Grey light filters through grey net curtains onto grey fur in the overturned milk bottle. The spilled milk has dried on the plastic tablecloth cracking and plaster-peeling to match the dreary walls of this tiny kitchen. Life has left this little world of gloom. The Krispies are motionless in the chipped white bowl. The snap, the crackle and the pop long gone. The tea from the cup has left only a brown stain to mark its passing. Even the fly buzz from the fly-blown food is noiseless now. No sound stirs the stagnant stillness. From above a cord dangles. A bare bulb gathers dust as grey as the light and the curtains and the mould but even the dust does not move in the dead air of this dead room. A rusty drawing pin in the grey ceiling plaster supports a twisted sepia cemetery where the bones of bluebottles remain unburied. Let the dead bury their dead.
Beyond the window, the grey light of a dewy morning lights upon the dishevel led garden. Among the long grass, dandelions and docks fight for dominance but at the edge of what was once a well-kept lawn, a shrub rose thrusts her upright growth above the chaos, straining to its full three feet, its flowers seeking the hidden sun. The blooms are fully double and shapely, white and soft pink splashes on the background of crimson. It stands defiant "Pride of Reigate" and once pride of a gardener born in that borough but long moved to northern climes. This rose is her memorial to times pleasant and past.
The flower heads nod in the breeze off the sea. They nod to the cherry tree at the lawn's heart, green leaves ever moving in the slight salt air, tinged with the fragrant scent of the climbing rose that clings tenaciously to life and to the tree's dark bark. Clusters of lemon white flowers seek the summer sun. Though happy in the shade of the cherry, they want more light than this morning has yet delivered. The heady fragrance swirls with the breeze and flies free over the garden that has all but lost the fight with nature. Bindweed binds the perennials and swears they shall not last another year.
At the end of the garden stands the old barn. It has not been used for its original purpose for many years. Within its darkened walls there lay no straw, no neglected bales of hay and no discarded agricultural implements. The barn has been used as a workshop for woodwork. There is a smell of sawdust and shavings. Tools lie jumbled on a workbench, coated with a layer of fine, pale sawdust. A variety of chisels lie with a selection of spoke shaves and ancient wooden planes which must have been preserved for decades, though now beginning to be edged with rust.
A piece of hardwood still fixed in the lathe, half finished, smooth curves caught from the block of wood, coaxed into being by turning chisels with long sleek handles, smooth and polished by strong hard hands that delicately fashioned beauty from rough wood.
The saw bench with a fine circular blade, its teeth browning like teeth not regularly brushed, lacks the cleaning power of sapele or apple wood and a light coat of oil, lovingly applied with an old rag. The tooth setter hangs on a one-and-a-half-inch oval driven into the gnarled old beam behind the bench. Beside this hang an assortment of blades, some with fine teeth for nibbling delicately at thin timber, some with great, evil, ripping teeth to tear roughly through the heavy wood, subduing it to the hands of a craftsman. All the tools, the awls, the wooden planes; chisels with walnut handles; hammers bound with ash; a brace and bit with a dark spiral one inch bit ready to make clean curling shavings grow from a neat hole in a rosewood panel. All these tools for working and cutting, smoothing and fashioning, all still. Noises and movement silenced and stilled. Only the smell of sawdust and shavings bear witness of a time that will not return.
The breeze whips up the dust momentarily; it is blown against the windows rimed with dust. Through the windows, the grasses wave on the cliff edge. A shadow passes over them, followed by sudden light as the morning sun finally succeeds in burning its way through grey clouds. The harbour below fills with golden sunlight, warming the sand coloured stone blocks where the waves lap. A gull swoops down to where the tide is low. Clusters of small boats lie at odd angles in the mud where they came to rest as the waters ebbed. A dark stain of black and green marks the highest point of the tide where seaweed clings. On the quayside, lobster pots are scattered and the detritus of the failing fishing fleet lies forlorn. Through the battered door of the harbour master's house, the sound of the radio wafts its way into the seagull-screeching air.
It is now confirmed that there were no casual ties as a result of the minor earthquake that struck the east coast last week. The tremors, which registered record levels, for this area, on the Richter scale, caused only minor damage. It is sixty-three years since earth tremors were last recorded on this coast and geologists say that it is unlikely that any major earthquake would ever hit this region. And now the rest of the news.
The rest of the news floats on the breeze above the harbour, above the cliff, beyond the barn and past the kitchen window where grey light filters through grey net curtains onto grey fur in the overturned milk bottle. The spilled milk has dried on the plastic tablecloth, cracking and plaster peeling to match the dreary walls of this tiny kitchen. Life has left this little world of gloom. By the side of an overturned chair lie desiccating remains where they fell, struck by a falling wall clock, when the first earth tremors for sixty-three years were felt by a man of as many years. There were no casualties, at least none to speak of.
