Popping In

The day the meter reader called and what came in through the window.

What I thought was the sound of my daughter in law and small daughter arriving back home, turned out to be a meter reader here to update our hot water meter’s relay function.

Meter readers, milk boys and girls, drapers’ vans, grocery delivery vans, butcher vans, the Bonns Brush Man, the Rawleigh’s Man (door to door sales people were always men back in the day) photographers … Long gone days that smack of Janet and John school readers and spelling words written by the teacher on to cardboard rectangles to be transported home in a tobacco tin (in my case, a Greys red and grey one obtained from Granddad.) Neat, round words like ‘Of course’ and ‘Could’. Words to practice spelling at home, ready for the next day’s spelling test.

Outside the open window I can hear the cheep of sparrows and the occasional heavy sigh of traffic as it makes its way down our street – a street fairly popular for through traffic, providing as it does something of a short cut from seaside to harbourside. In fact, not far along from our street, there’s a historic shortcut the Maori used to shoulder their waka from the harbour to the sea.

My daughter in law and granddaughter have arrived back. Now floating through the window, the sound from the down stair’s flat as my granddaughter remonstrates about the fact that it is time for her afternoon nap.

Overnight, poppies have also flowered in our garden. I have been waiting for some days for them to ‘pop’. (I do wonder if their tendency to pop up, is the reason for their name? Just as I have often wondered if dandelions are so-called because of their yellow ruff; their mane of gold.)