Twickenham road, the name itself tastes of yesterday’s
charm. Along both sides, chubby little trees giggle in the breeze and do their
best to stand in single file, hands behind their backs, under the gaze of the
tired old houses watching over them day and night.
At number twenty-one, a rose bush offers its manicured
fingers for a handshake through the wrought iron fence, a heavy black outline
on this quaint garden scene. A lavender bush greets me shyly with her perfume;
nostalgia; while the lemon tree sheepishly draws her leafy curtains on those
lemons she has been too lazy to yellow. A shabby path of loose bricks and
rebellious weeds leads me to the front door, red and smiling between two round
windows, the eyes of number twenty-one, which, as legend would have it, have
not so much as blinked in over a hundred years.
The air behind that red door is cool and thick with the
scent of aged wooden floors, floors which protest in loud creaks and moans as I
go, for I have woken them from their dusty slumber. The furniture peers
questioningly at me as I pass. I am an outsider in a carpentry village. A
kaleidoscope of paintings on the walls laugh and tell me to ignore the old
wooden fogies. I make my way yonder, to the heart of this little house, the
kitchen, bursting at the seams with jars of cutlery, cooking utensils of every
imaginable kind, and a vast family of crockery young and old vying for space on
shelves and table tops too small. A happy old tap drips drops of water on his
tin sink drum, this tap that refuses to ever be closed properly, for it is his
job, he tells me, to keep the heart of this home beating.
Behind the next door, a bedroom. The tang of a citronella
candle is a warning; tiny vampires feed here at night. A sleeping laptop purrs
on the corner of the bed, crisp white and unmade. On the glass desk, an
artillery of art supplies lie scattered in their bright uniform, at ease for
the moment. A pale blue curtain flirts with the tired floor, teasing and
tempting with the lift of her skirt in the breeze, a breeze which, if one
happens to catch it at the right moment, carries the soft scent of lavender, a
nostalgic scent indeed.
