A Meditation on Imperfection

I've just come in out of the dark, slightly frustrated that the bolt on the shed door won't meet its keeper -- only because I left the door half open in the lovely weather we've been having, and this always happens; the door seems to have dropped while it was on holiday. So I've wedged them together with the screwdriver and come stumping in, cross and weary and wondering when ever my eyes are going to stop streaming with this weird new hayfever.

Seventeen years here, and nearly every year I've had to take out the keeper and screw it into the rotting door frame about a centimeter further down. You'd think it would have hit the floor by now. I don't get it. You'd think I'd be able to push the door back up on its hinges, but no.

One day I will pay a nice man to replace the frame and the door and I might even get round to painting them. None of the replaced window frames around here have ever got beyond the undercoat. I am just too, too -- what is the word: pressed?

All of this has reminded me of my grandmother. I had a sudden recollection tonight of her sheds at the bottom of the garden, full of thick cobwebs and ancient tools, piles of junk, the roofs leaking and smelling of tomcat. I'm not that different. I realised at the same time that all that would have been needed was either money or help, or preferably both.

My grandmother was widowed in World War One and left with four little children. Then, just as she might have expected her lovely tall, strong, King's Scout of a son to help her with her shed, he was killed in World War Two. So, just like me, she had to get on with the day job and sew for her life. The shed went to the dogs.

Now she is long dead and what do I remember about her? Nothing but her kindness. She was the kindest, sweetest, loveliest old lady. She'd been through the mill, and it often seems to help.

My dream of perfection here in this beautiful countryside depended on the idea of it being perfectly peopled, largely by one large, strong man. He was to cut down the thickets of comfrey that were to make my compost. He was to keep the shed as pretty as a picture book, never mind keep me smiling and my eyes shining.

So I am living with humungous imperfections all round, and I will just have to remember that I won't be remembered for that. I will be remembered for my character. However, tonight that character is not about to do random acts of kindness. It's about to log onto Ebay and see what's up.

The best pic of a shed on the internet is of Bob Flowerdew sitting in his, but that pigtail gives me the heebie-jeebies. I refuse to give him the ether. Here is something from the great depression. It feels right for tonight -- because I didn't also say that it feels like the Silent Spring out there tonight, as it has all week. No insects left. Only plenty of bees on my hundreds of chive flowers which have lined and filled my "patio". My "patio" is as bad as my shed. But that's another story.

A PS to all this: the very next morning I heard on the radio the words of Philip Larkin:

"Life: a beginning, a muddle and an end."