Laurie Lee in “Cider with Rosie” Master of the Revelatory Detail
The kitchen, worn by our boots and lives, was scruffy, warm and low, whose fuss of furniture never seemed the same, but was shuffled around each day. A black grate crackled with coal and beech twigs; towels toasted on the guard; the mantel was littered with fine old china, horses brasses and freak potatoes. On te floor were strips of muddy matting, the windows were coked with plants, the walls supported stopped clocks and calendars, (wonderful revelatory detail) and smoky fungus ran over the ceilings. (another revelatory detail). There were six tables of different sizes, some armchairs gapingly stuffed, (all revelatory) boxes, stools and unravelling boxes, books and papers on every chair, a sofa for cats, a harmonium for coats, and a piano for dust and photographs. (Note understated humour) These were the shapes of our kitchen landscape, the rocks of our submarine life, each object worn smooth by our constant nuzzling, or encrusted by lively barnacles, relics of birthdays and dead relations, wrecks of furniture long since floundered, all silted deep by Mother’s newspapers which the years piled around on the floor.
Parenthesis, mine.
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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