Grace Notes

The private journals of Grace Hollister...

October 22nd 2003


What a lovely day. The rain is soft and sweet today, pattering on the leaves and flowers in the garden -- not that there is much left in the way of flowers. Still, it's lovely. The scent of woodsmoke mingles with other scents: leather, pumpkin, wet earth and crumbling leaves - the spices of the fall.




Last night Peter showed up unexpectedly at the cottage, inviting me down to the pub for casual supper. I wasn't expecting him and so I went to the door wearing my spectacles and wrapped in a quilt like an Indian.


His mouth did that sort of private quirky thing, but he just said very casually that he was on his way to the Cock's Crow, and did I feel like coming along? Well, I did, because for one thing I'm tired of slightly stale blueberry gingerbread, and I haven't got round to making anything else yet. As much as I love to cook, I've never done much of it, and I never quite seem to be exactly in the right mood. So I said, just as casually, that yes, I'd like that.


We decided to walk down to the pub. The rain had stopped and the sky was a wonderful purple-blue. Lights were on in the houses, smoke silvery in the sky, the slate roofs dark from the recent rain. We didn't speak almost at all, but it wasn't awkward just...quiet.





The pub was packed. It's always packed in the evenings. There wasn't any real opportunity to talk then because we were ended up joining a party of Americans who were staying overnight in the village. Listening to them, I realized what headway I've made acclimatizing!


Well, all things being relative.


I had the shepherd's pie, which is really just mince (chopped or ground beef) and potatoes, but somehow it tastes different here.


The beer is very good too -- and the Guinness is like creamy silk. Delicious.

We stayed 'til the Americans began to sing, and then we slipped out.

The moon was soft and woolly as we walked back along the silent streets. At the cottage, Peter stopped me from slipping inside with a hand on my arm. He kissed me, a gentle, brief kiss -- and touched my face. The kiss -- it was a nice kiss, an expert kiss, but the thing that got my heart beating faster was the look in his eyes.

Of course, I might have got that wrong, given that the lantern over the front door doesn't throw the best light in the world.

He said he'd see me in the morning, and he went -- quiet as a shadow down the stone path.

Today everything seems back to normal. A lovely normal. And every time I caught Peter's eyes, he smiled.





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October 21st 2003



O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being—
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,


Those are lovely lines. My favorite three lines in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," I think. " He wrote it -- or at least was inspired to write it -- in a wood beside the Arno River in Tuscany, near Florence. "On a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains."

On the whole I find Shelley's work a little melancholy. It's hard not to feel occasionally just the tiniest bit impatient with him.

It's raining again. Peter has not asked me to dinner since the night I told him I had plans.