Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village

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‘I’M NOT IN. Over,’ I told my mother, sighing as I held the walkie-talkie in my right hand and with my left continued painstakingly to stick small seeds to the outside of my living-room window.

‘When will you be back? Over,’ she asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Over,’ I replied.

‘Well, I hope you’re back soon,’ she said, reprovingly. ‘This is the third time I’ve walkie-talked and you haven’t been there. How am I supposed to talk with my own son if he’s never there? Over.’

‘But, Mother, I was here. I was busy. And now we are talking. Over.’

‘What’s keeping you so occupied, anyway? Over.’

‘I’m sticking seeds to the living-room window, Mother. Over.’

There was a pause for thought, and then my mother said, ‘Well, at least you’re keeping out of mischief. I’ll buzz you later. Over.’

‘Roger, wilco, over and out,’ I said.

I placed the walkie-talkie on the window ledge, and continued to stick the seeds to the window. It was extremely tedious, and, as I had been at it since breakfast time, I was beginning to find the whole task irksome. I should have been out painting and decorating and bringing in some cash. I even wondered whether this palaver was worth it. Some of the seeds were exceedingly small, and I kept dropping them into the flower bed. I had heard that a lot of the ones in bird food are actually hemp, and I worried that perhaps in the spring these would germinate. If the village bobby happened to pass by, I might get into serious trouble and cause a scandal in the village. So I was spending an undue amount of time on my knees on the damp lawn, looking for the seeds that I had dropped. No doubt many would be found by mice, but then the cat would probably jump on them and I would feel guilty about having lured them to their deaths.

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