Two Post Offices

On Friday, Matthew was keen to go out again because he's learning that the more he stays in, the more he feels tired. It's sinking in – hurray!

He wanted to visit the two post offices, so that's what we did. On the way to the first one, we saw that someone's been hacking at their hedge and they've revealed a monster, which is nice. We should probably do this with the brambles at the front of our house, but I'm worried they're holding the house up at this point.

This is one of the trees at the end of our road. I was looking at it for a bit to see if it was climable, but it isn't really. I'm quite keen to climb a tree again because I haven't done it for about six months. You can't forget how to climb a tree, of course, but I need some lower branches to get my first leg up these days.

The skies are dramatic again, have you noticed? The roads are busy too, compared to a few weeks ago. I have nothing else to say about that. The next few weeks of numbers will say what needs to be said, I'm sure. 

It didn't take long at all to reach the first post office because it's very close to our house. If we wrote lots of letters, we'd probably come here all the time to buy stamps and post our epistles ... our missives ... our dispatches ... sorry, I was looking for another word for letter and I couldn't decide which one fit best, so I used them all. 

We got to the end of Penryhn Road and the usual way to the other post office is to just turn right and go along Torrisholme Road, but I says to Matthew, 'do you want to go the quick way, son [I did call him this], or would you like to go to the Favourite Place and have a slightly longer walk?' I was prepared to leave the choice totally up to Matthew, but really I was testing him to see if he'd bottle it and pick the easy route. Well, the boy did not let me down – good lad chose the longer road because it's nicer.

So we found ourselves next to the cricket club again – no one practising today. That house there, I've been meaning to tell you, has a Jolly Roger on it, on the extension at the back, but the phone can't capture it.

I noticed today – though it was probably like this a couple of days ago as well – that the grass has gone to seed. Well, you know what that means, of course? 

It means you can do this! Ohhhhh, yes! It's been ages since I've done this. I did it all the way along the lane. Is there a name for it? 

The Germans will have a word for it because they've got a word for everything. Grassamen abstreifen means stripping grass seed, so we'll go with that until we hear something better. Yes, yes I do speak German. I don't – that's a complete lie. I wish I did though because I think it's an awesome language. I once started a German class at Thomas's college when the boys were very young, but it was cancelled because there were only eight people taking it. 

Matthew and I arrived at the pond-that-used-to-be-a-field, and I climbed up the fence a bit to get a better photo so that I could prove to you it is really a pond, but you still can't see the water. You'll just have to take my word for it because the next stage is for me to climb over the fence and walk down to the pond properly, and I'm afraid I'm just not that much of a rebel that I'm willing to do that for you.  

Ohhhhh look, we're at Jack Sparrow Lane again. I asked Matthew if he could see why this area around the pond and the lane and the muck-spreaded field and the bench on the new road is my favourite. He said that he could, but he spoke with no enthusiasm whatsoever so I think he was just humouring me. I'll have to teach him how to humour more convincingly.

But hey, look, some definite growth in our lovely, neat field. What's it gonna be? Can we tell yet? This is so exciting! We'll check back next week and see how much more it's grown. I feel like Monty Don!

We couldn't skip home past the crematorium from the Favourite Place because we still had to see the other post office. This is Barley Cop Lane – I've just noticed that that's rather a lovely name for a street. It's just a normal street, but Matthew likes walking along here because a couple of his old friends live nearby and he loves reminiscing about his old school. 

We wanted to see the school, but it was in the opposite direction to the one we were heading, so we decided to save it for another day. We're better at walking further now, but we'd already walked much further than we'd intended.

Here's the second post office. It's a shop, actually, that had the post office moved into it from across the road. It looks like the glass in the door has been smashed in, which is not cool at all.

We had achieved our objective, so we could go home for our tea, which would not have been made for us by the two lazy teenagers. 

On the way back I walked along the park wall, where all children in this area have walked on their way to and from school for many decades. My children walked on this wall, as their mother and uncle did before them.  

Matthew also remembered walking on this little patch of grass on the way home from school. It's a funny thing, isn't it, that children will walk on something that adults generally won't, just because it's there? Like cats who will sit in a chalk square if you draw one. I can't remember a single occasion when the the boys chose to walk on the pavement here instead of walking on the grass and running through that gap next to the tree to meet me on the other side. Memories of nothing in particular become very precious, don't they? 

This isn't a memory, but I thought I'd show you this. That semi-circular patch at the bottom of the wall has been caused by that dripping pipe near the top of the wall. It's been dripping since at least the start of the lockdown, and maybe before. Every time I walk past here, I check to see if it's still dripping and it always is. Apart from one day when it wasn't, and I thought perhaps someone had been back to work inside and turned off a tap that had been left running. But the next time I was here it was dripping again. This is how terribly exciting my life is.

With sore legs again and rumbling tummies, we finally got home, much later than we'd expected. Matthew told me that these two owls are the guardians of our street and they sometimes come to life when we need to be defended from marauders. I was comforted by that.

Until tomorrow, dear hearts,

WQ