Mrs Plunkett 's Boarding House

[smokingboot]

This is a strange old memory to find me now, when everything is cold and dark.  If I lie close to the fire my back is freezing, if I move away all of me is freezing.  It reminds me of Mrs Plunkett’s boarding house close to Clonegal Castle down in the South East of Ireland many years ago. Olivia Durdin-Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Robertson) aunt to the baron and excellent friend lived at the castle. We spent much time together there on the doorstep of Narnia, and it was wonderful, but that's not what memory shows me now. Now what I see is Mrs Plunkett’s boarding house nearby, well meaning but dark and very cold. In my room there was a big basket full of cut up slabs of peat, and these I would burn as best I could in the hearth. Small light and sullen heat! Still, bless Mrs Plunkett's strange generosity, if I used up every peat square in a night, the basket would be full the next, so I never ran out of these exercises in futility.  I was so unsuccessful I wondered if there was a special method for making peat burn well, but have never heard of one to this day.

Mrs Plunkett’s was said to be haunted but then so was everywhere else. For sure I got little sleep with that dim fire and the chill wracking my bones, but as to the clanking chains and the ominous dread recounted by friends, all I ever really felt there was bloody cold. I never felt that strange stillness I associate with something nearby. And I wonder why it is I remember Olivia today. 

Comments

[summersgate]

An interesting memory!

[smokingboot]

Yes, I realise that today is the anniversary of my friend's passing, so that may have triggered it, or maybe just this sudden dark cold!