Sunday, May 26, 2013

Visitor, sock elastic and netsuke

Cat visitor  to the vegetable garden in contemplative frame of mind.

A discussion about schoolboy socks in the days of socks and short trousers.  You used to hold them up with knicker-elastic. They made nasty marks round the top of your calves which itched. Which is why so many schoolboys in those days used to run round with socks round their ankles.

Whenever I meet Nick the fishmonger, usually queueing in the checkout at Sainsbury's he gives me his latest netsuke news. He is an enthusiastic collector of the little Japanese carvings originally  worn to suspend articles from a girdle." I 've got a new one," he tells me, "commissioned in Japan." Before I have time to ask about what it's made of or what it represents, he disappears into the maw of the supermarket.

3 comments:

Ellena said...

Raphael did not tell me that he would go and visit you some day. He's been looking for you for the past 6 years. Be kind to him.

Unknown said...

Of course. I am always kind to cats. Next time I see him I will address him by name!

Roderick Robinson said...

The cat looks depressed.
By the onset of incipient jowl.