Wiltshire 

When I went out this morning to feed my chickens I heard  a woodpigeon  in the lime tree at the end of the garden. This sound always reminds me of Gypsy Furlong, the house where my grandparents,  and where we, for a brief time lived. 

Gypsy Furlong smelt of damp newspapers and woodsmoke, of beeswax polish, cooking apples and leather boots . A house full of creaking stairs, starched sheets and hot water bottles. The kitchen table I am sitting  at now came from there, scrubbed and bleached within an inch of its life each morning in my grandparents day by Muriel Tibble, sweet and smiley, hair in a plait wound round her head like a character from The Sound of Music. My brother and I loved Muriel,  or Lola as we called her, she had been with  the family since my father was a boy and she lived in a room up at the back of the house with a cabinet full of trinkets, toby jugs, tiny boxes encrusted with shells and postcards from the seaside. Every morning I would get up early, breath steaming in the cold kitchen and have a cup of tea with her as she busied herself lighting the fire and getting breakfast, before everyone else was about. This set a pattern for the rest of my life  as I am still an early riser and still need a cup of tea before anything else, delighting in the quiet, empty kitchen at the start of the day. I have a large silver fork in our cutlery drawer that Lola used to use instead of a whisk while making cakes and scones.  The prongs are  completely worn down at a perfect angle after years of being  beaten  against the side of the mixing bowl. In the  days when things were made to last, were mended and fixed, never discarded, the days of waste not want not. 

My fathers family had been born and bred into the village , starting off in the big house on the way up to the main road and then gradually uprooting and scattering so that we had relations in pretty much every village on the way to Marlborough. My particular favourites were the Aunts, Auntie Grumpie and Auntie Polly. They had moved a mile or so stroll across the water meadows as young women and had lived for the rest of their lives in a house with gardens leading down to the river, within sight of the tiny church where we were christened, with a Victorian cast iron bath in each of the bedrooms. It was rumoured that they had both lost sweethearts in the first world war. The aunts were famous for their home made strawberry ice cream and for their interesting ( and in our eyes very exciting) driving methods. I can’t remember which way round it was but one could hardly see and the other had terrible arthritis,  so between them they drove their old grey Wolesley car,  with one steering and the other changing  gear, sometimes on the right side of the road, often not.  Once a month on a Sunday the Wolseley would career up the drive at my boarding school, and me and a lucky friend ( there was a waiting list) would be collected by the aunts and driven back to their house for a slap up perfect roast lunch, followed by the aforementioned strawberry ice cream with a box of Black magic chocolates each  to take back with us. This marvellous arrangement came to an abrupt  end one summer. My parents were home on leave and the aunts came to tea. At the appointed hour the car careered up the drive, spitting gravel at each turn,  and instead of coming to a gentle halt,  crashed  with a sickening thud straight into a large stone urn full of geraniums outside the front door. When the aunts hopped out of the car to greet us it became apparent that they simply had not noticed the badly dented bumper or smashed headlights. From then on, much  to our disappointment my father banned us from ever getting into a car with them again and he made sure a taxi was sent to and from school to collect us. 

From time to time we would go and visit our other relations in the surrounding villages,  Uncle Billy who lived up the back lane, and had a Chinese cook who made us orange squash in a saucepan, which he served into glasses with an enormous silver ladle. Aunt Cicely who lived an enormous house full of gently chiming clocks and a greenhouse where she grew melons, and Robin and Eve. When ever I see one of those green mint Viscount biscuits  I am reminded of  outings with them, with scratchy picnic blankets and flasks of tea. And because of them I always put a splash of Lea and Perrins and a slice of ham under my scrambled eggs

There is nobody left now. They are long gone. Gypsy Furlong has been loved and lived in lived in by two other families since. But I can still remember the sound of the rooks as they noisily made their way home to roost on the larch lawn and the woodpigeons in the wisteria