under the old boards at the orchard house, another relic of former owners, maybe as old as me. The plumber cut it off when I asked him to move a pipe, dropped it into the pit between the joists. There to join the building site cache of 70s arcana, crumpled cans of Double Diamond and yellow front pages from the Daily Mirror behind my grandfather’s old staircase boarding. The era of Fray Bentos pies and mud-brown Morris Itals, Saturday morning comics, mechanical toys, the ski Gondola with the tangled wires my father brought back from a business trip to Switzerland. Bright-painted wooden tugs from Holland. A Hungarian chess clock. An ACTIONman land rover in green after a wet week camping at a Cambria youth centre, the box resting on the asphalt of the railway platform where he stood waiting for me, still with the five gold stars to collect printed on the side. All the things I cast away on that long tramp from power cuts and strikes and the scuffed knees of the first primary. And this shiny bit of brass I saved.
