COFFEE WITH ESTHER AND ERNEST HEMMINGWAY

This is a post left over from when Loose and Leafy was a work of fiction. Later, it evolved into what it is now - a blog about the wild plants of the South Dorset Coast.

To make sense (in so far as there is sense) of these early posts, you may like to take a look at Esther in the Garden.

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Before she went away, Esther and I used to meet for coffee quite often, sometimes at her house, sometimes at mine.

I don't know which I liked best.

I liked being at the receiving end of a next-door-neighbourly-visit. But Esther was never really comfortable here. She was worried she might tread mud into my white carpet or spill her coffee on the sofa and I was worried about this too - which introduced a tension into what would otherwise have been a total pleasure so, mostly, I went round her house and we sat in her kitchen and I tried not to notice the dust or look round at the muddle or offer to do the washing up.

One day, we were nattering on, drifting from subject to subject, as one does, when

How odd. There's a man walking around outside. He's gone by least three times.

Anyway, we drifted into education and the things we had been forced to read at school and how strange it was that this made us love some books for life but put us off others for ever when I started complaining about a dreadful story about bullfighting by Ernest Hemmingway.

Esther said it wasn't anywhere near as boring as the one about one man catching one fish. That simply goes on and on and on.

He's there again. I think he's trying to look in.

Then, she said I should learn to appreciate full stops.

I can't help it if

It's a bit worrying really. He's very pale. Not that one would seriously expect this to matter except it makes him look more sinister than if he had a healthy summer glow.

I tend to catch onto a subject and keep talking. It was part of my training when I first joined Casterbridge Pies. It took me all round Europe that

Sorry, I've simply got to find out what he's

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