Haibun 5 Comments

At my age, I am often surprised. I count this willingness to wonder about changes as one of the blessings which came naturally when I tumbled ‘over the hill’.
As in many villages and small towns, the Pembroke Post Office is an important place, far more personally so than any other institution. From here, folk deliver hand-written letters and parcelled gifts to friends and family who live so far away. There is a curious solemnity about the ritual weighing of packets at the threshold of the Post Office counter, and in the liturgy of questions as to their appointed ‘class’ and value. Oddly, I’ve never seen two of the three persons who sit behind the counter anywhere else in the town. If I were a child, I might believe that they lived and worked under house arrest! Maurice is the exception.

Maurice’s local is ‘The Waterman’s Arms’, a fine old pub at the far end of the bridge across Pembroke millpond, which has outdoor seating from which you can watch the swans pass or congregate - or see otters, if you are lucky. Inside, on weekend nights, I’ve seen Maurice ‘let down his hair’, propping up the bar with pints and conversation. Tie-less, in mufti, he loses his influential air: one of the rest of us on this side of the barman’s counter. On Monday mornings, however, his long face framed by a neatly parted hairstyle which features a short, thin, straight, fine fringe, Maurice represents all that is enduring about one of the oldest British social institutions. His droll, dark, voice and melancholy features, the laconic tilt of his head and shrugged shoulders which answer to questions as to the scale of his hangover, are as familiar as the sight of one’s own right hand curved round a pen.
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