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			THOUGHTS FROM JAMES BARBER James Barber's Duncan Diary Duncan Diary Instalment #8 – Piano Man Part 2! Mr. Bolton came to supper. (The old guy with the muff who was taking piano lessons to please his wife. Who was dead.) Wasn’t fussy, he said, liked meat and potatoes. Spaghetti? Don’t like foreign food. Lamb chops? Lamb’s not really meat. So I bought a beef brisket from the butcher, put it in a pot with water and simmered it for a couple of hours, then an hour before supper (I had to go get him, he hitchhiked, no car) I put in two whole onions, two carrots, two turnips, two quartered potatoes and half a cabbage cut in two pieces, a bay leaf, and a lot of pepper for flavour, and let it all simmer. When we got back the house smelt wonderful (I’d also put in a couple of cloves). We put the pot on the table, he said no to wine (" no thank you" ) but he said what we usually like for supper is a nice cup of tea. "We" he said, "we really like tea." and he’d told me a year ago the first time we met, that his wife had died six years ago. "We" he said – there were just two plates at the table but three of us at supper. He never told me her name, but there was no doubt that she was there. "We met at a tea party." he said, "I told her it was too weak and we both liked it strong so we had something to start with. We still do. We like it strong." "We" he said, "we used to get up early but we sleep in now." "We" had enough to do to keep "us" busy – the garden and the laundry ("we don’t iron much but we like things clean"). And we’re thinking about painting the kitchen. We used to grow tomatoes and cabbage and beans and we used to can a lot but we don’t now but we’ve still got enough to do, keeping things tidy and reading the paper. We don’t watch a lot of television and we usually walk up to the park. There’s the cat to feed and of course there’s the piano. We’ve got enough to do most days. . "We like corned beef." he said, "W always liked it better the day after, with dumplings." We had a neighbour who used to come to supper and we always gave them corned beef but his wife died and ‘they’ stopped going out .We haven’t seen much of him lately. I think he misses her.” He had seconds of the brisket, then I gave him a baked apple, stuffed with raisins and brown sugar. "We used to eat a lot of apples" he said , and he told me about the apple tree and how it died one winter, just seemed to give up and not grow any more. "We" had two trees, one was a cherry tree but "we" never got to eat many cherries because the birds knew exactly when they were ripe and just came early in the morning and ate them all. "We" didn’t really mind. "We liked the birds too." I said I’d make more tea but he said they ought to be getting home. "We don’t like too late" he said. "And I’ve got to do my piano." So I drove them home. He said "Thank you, we had a nice time." James Barber - more diaries
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