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11:04am on Wednesday, 23rd June, 2021:
Anecdote
I answered a knock at the door yesterday to find three women smiling sheepishly at me. Two looked to be aged about 50 and the other rather older; family resemblance told me they were a mother and two daughters.
"You're going to think we're strange", began one of the daughters.
"I already do", I told them.
"We used to live in this house many years ago, and we wondered if we could look around the garden? We've brought some photos to prove it."
"Are you the Blundells?"
"You ... you know us?"
"No, but we're the Bartles and we bought the house off the Boutells, who bought it off the Blundells."
We didn't just let them look round the garden, of course: we showed them the whole house. They were very emotional — their father/husband had built the house, and they loved the fact that some of the features were still intact. They were also interested in the changes we or the Blundells had made. They took photos so they could show their other two sisters/daughters. Memories came flooding back, although sadly they did not include how the electricity in the playroom (which for them was the music room) connected to the rest of the house. Although the back lawn was (and remains) in dire need of a trim, the house itself was presentable; by some miracle, we'd even made the bed that morning. They reminisced about swinging on trees, putting logs on the fire, and how awful the 1970s fashion for coloured sinks was.
In the end, by letting three complete strangers wander around our house and garden together, we made them very happy.
I warned them that if we were robbed in the next two weeks, we'd know who did it.
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