Monday 15 August 2011

There was an overcrowded

house in one of the side streets on our way home. My sister was doing a detour and we came across it through one of those odd little quirks of chance.
It was an unremarkable suburban house with equally unremarkable surburban houses on either side. The steeply sloping front yard was covered in bark chips, a few lost looking shrubs and the party people.
There must have been one hundred or even more of them. What was odd was not just that there were so many of them but that they all wore the same stone coloured clothing. No, it was not a uniform. There was a considerable variety of dress - and undress.
There were also people you do not usually see in suburbia too, a Greek warrior and St George (or someone) was still, rather unsociably, astride his dragon. There were elegant women in chitons and men in togas. There was a row of earnest looking dwarves holding glasses and another leaning on a garden spade. There were elves, pixes, a gargoyle or two and others.
I have never seen so many "garden gnomes" in one place, not even the garden centre that once specialised in such things. They were all getting along very well with one another. There was no fighting or arguing or excessive drinking.
As we stopped and looked a large black and white cat strolled through them and stopped to look at us.
He gave me a look which said, "Ridiculous isn't it?" and then strolled on to the sunny spot near the letter box (gnome-shaped).
Yes, ridiculous - but it was marvellous fun for a moment.

5 comments:

Miriam said...

What a shame you don't have photos on your blog. We passed quite a lot of gnomes on a walk the other day. I should go back and snap them.

widdershins said...

What a wonderful image!

catdownunder said...

My sister is feeling very cross with herself. She was intending to take her camera to get a picture of the beach below my uncle's house (magnificent beach and cliffs) and the garden we saw would have been the icing on the cake. Neither of us took down the name of the street!

dandelion girl said...

there is a house in Bath like that by the river. Although their gnomes are very colourful. It's a bit of an eyeful!

Miriam said...

Me again. I just gave you a friendly award. Visit my blog to claim it.