Quiet Friends.

This evening I talked to an interesting stone I found lying at the side of Church Lane. Its shape suggested it had spent some considerable time in a river during its long history, and I wondered how it had managed to end up in Church Lane. I don’t often talk to stones. When I’m wending my weary way along the lanes and footpaths of the Shire, I mostly have imaginary conversations with the Lady B.

I’ve tried writing her a-mails, you see, and I’ve tried not writing her e-mails. I’ve tried writing little ditties about her and putting them on the blog. Nothing works; I never get any response. It seems the Lady B has become my imaginary friend.

When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend called Michael, to whom I used to talk while sitting in a makeshift tent on the back lawn, playing my dad’s old 78” records on my dad’s old wind-up gramophone. (My dad was very much older than me, you understand.)

And now it seems my little life has come full circle and I have an imaginary friend again. The Lady B is not quite as imaginary as Michael was, but she’s every bit as quiet.