Don't Ask Me

I gave Sarah a lift to the Old Rectory for tea this afternoon, as it started to spit as soon as we set off on foot, and there was a mean rawness to the air. The long drive was thickly lined with just open daffodils, brave souls on such a day, but once on the other side of the gigantic front door the warmth hit us. Lovely old house, and right away I recognised the spot where the ghost had been sighted. I was shown the exact place, and the space between spectre and seer was no more than eight feet. Not much margin for error then. Not sure I would want to live there after that. And so we settled down to tea around the blazing log fire while hot cross buns were toasted on an old-fashioned fork, and naturally enough the conversation turned back to the  paranormal, and another tale. It seems that P brought home a Chinese statue of a bent old man one day, that he'd picked up from an antique shop near his work place. C took one look and said she hated it: it had a little row of shiny ivory teeth and ivory fingernails, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in fear and loathing. P just laughed, and they agreed to keep it in the sitting room for a few days. The first night a painting above the fireplace crashed to the ground, knocking several precious objects off the mantlepiece and breaking them. Light bulbs exploded, teacups rattled in their saucers on the table, and a well-tended house plant died overnight. They moved it to an outbuilding, and one by one the lawnmowers surrounding it refused to start. 

P took it to another antique dealer whose Chinese wife loved it on sight, and a sale was agreed. The woman told him that it was a well-known Chinese figure, godlike in stature, and if you kept him by the front door and rubbed his head on entering and leaving the house he would bring great luck and happiness. Was it the old man who had displayed such anger in the Old Rectory, or the previous in incumbents, men of God one and all, objecting to their pagan visitor?

The weather had changed again when we left, and I had to get out for a walk. The ditches and grass verges are like a flower shop specialising in primroses, and the scent wafted through the air. I have never seen so many in one place before. The hedges are just beginning to show green, but the edge to the air is still wintry. We can wait.