Many thanks to Phil for capturing these wonderful images of her ensconced in her favorite seat, cigarette in hand, her face illuminated on one side by the sunlit window. I can sense the atmosphere, smell the smoke, hear the laughter. It’s the next best thing to actually being there.

At mid-day then along the lane
Old Jack Noman appeared again,
Jaunty and old, crooked and tall,
And stopped and grinned at me over the wall,
With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole
And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll
Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale?
He was welcome as the nightingale.
Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack.
‘I’ve got my Indian complexion back’
Said he. He was tanned like a harvester,
Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur
That clung to his coat from last night’s bed,
Like the ploughland crumbling red.
Fairer flowers were none on the earth
Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth,
Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket.
‘Where did they come from, Jack?’ ‘Don’t ask it,
And you’ll be told no lies.’ ‘Very well:
Then I can’t buy.’ ‘I don’t want to sell.
Take them and these flowers, too, free.
Perhaps you have something to give me?
Wait till next time. The better the day . . .
The Lord couldn’t make a better, I say;
If he could, he never has done.’
So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run,
Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill
And his cowslips from Wheatham hill.