8th Spring - 14th Spring
"It follows me at all times."
8TH SPRING
It was raining again when I woke up, simply pelting it down. I tried to avoid leaving the farmhouse in the hope that it might slacken off. After a while I started wandering around the house, poking into those rooms I'd not really looked at yet. It occurred to me I've barely been anywhere but a bedroom, a bathroom, and the living room. The place is still full of year's worth of accumulated dust. No point in cleaning rooms I'm not using, not if I'm knee-deep in dirt all day anyway. It's more akin to camping than living.
There's a wardrobe in the back bedroom (Probably would be a handsome piece of furniture once it's tidied up). Looks like it's full of clothes Granddad left behind when he went back to the city. An old cloak at the back, made of what feels like heavy wool felted together. It hangs almost like a poncho, fastened at the shoulder. I think it was once meant to have been deep blue. It's basically grey now.
9TH SPRING
I woke up before dawn. Too early. Couldn't get back to sleep – something about the deafening silence – so I went for a walk. The opening hour, I used to call it. The hour when people in offices are just getting up, but the services staff are getting in and starting work. Most of them get to shamble in, huddled in a coat, maybe sulk over a coffee for ten minutes. This Joja manager, though … Yoba Below, he actually waits for his employees to arrive. All but escorts them inside.
Helicopter management at its worst.
There was mail waiting when I got back.
"My sources tell me you've been poking around inside the old Community Centre.
Why don't you pay me a visit? My chambers are West of the forest lake, in the stone tower. I may have information regarding your 'rat problem'.
- M. Rasmodius, Wizard."
Wizard? In this day and age? Is practising magic even legal, anyway?
A second crop of parsnips to grub up today! They don't seem quite so beautiful a second time around. A little scrawny, perhaps, I can't help but think no-one would buy them if you placed them next to Joja parsnips. But they're still £26.5s to me. I wonder if I could haggle up to £27? *
* £26.10s was the final count on the parsnips (Not bad). Reinvested some of that in seed potatoes. Granddad did grow tatties, sometimes in old handbags.
Went the long way round to the general store, along the lane past Marnie's. The commas were back out after the rain, and some peacock butterflies fluttering around the paths. Aglais io! Photos in a field guide don't do them justice. It opens its wings, and suddenly the insect turns from a dull brown leaf into an iridescent drama of eye spots.
I saw Penny again. She was reading something beneath a sycamore tree … a small figure beneath the naked branches. A library book – I could tell by the distinctive plastic dust jacket. She was an air about her, like she's in danger of fading into the background. I'm not really sure how, but we ended up chatting. -It was- It was nice. I asked her if she'd help me navigate the library. At first she gave me this look, like … she couldn't believe I had the nerve. Then she smiled.
It was like the sun coming out.
10TH SPRING
I don't know what I expected from the … wizard's tower. The day was persistently bright and breezy, the clouds cut up into little scuds of stratocumulus. There's a path leading along the North side of the lake, stony, and simply bursting with celandines. Beyond the pier it winds through larch woods, old needles forming soft drifts underfoot. I caught furtive glimpses of birds flitting between the trees. Goldfinches hiding among the branches. Great tits belting out their 'tee-cha tee-cha!' call.
After a mile or so the tower peers up above the trees. It looked like a folly, or perhaps a church tower. A column of smoke rising from an unseen chimney. Not the twisty, ivy-clad fairy tale I envisioned. Still, there was something odd about it. I realised after a while that in spite of the breezy day, the smoke was rising vertically. The tower's sited atop a steep hill like a castle on a motte. The first real surprise – a simply enormous cauliflower in the fore plot. I checked, they shouldn't even be mature, let alone three feet tall!
A deep, plangent voice declared "ENTER" when I reached the door. That might have been more impressive if I hadn't seen the security camera not quite hidden in a gargoyle.
Rasmodius, when I found him, received me in what looked like a gentleman's library – high lancet windows, antique leather armchairs, a fire burning in the hearth. Rasmodius himself was a middle-aged bloke with a receding hairline and an embroidered waistcoat.
"Ahh …" he declaimed magisterially, "you whose arrival I have long foreseen!"
He likes his theatre, apparently.
"I'd like to show you something," he said. He pulled aside a Persian carpet in the middle of the room. There was an octogram painted on the floor beneath.
"Behold!"
He made an elaborate gesture. Something materialised on the octogram – a small, boxy creature with noodle arms. Its green skin had a sheen to it, like the skin of an apple. It seemed to quiver, as if struggling to break free.
"They call themselves the Junimos. For some reason, they refuse to speak with me."
If that's the way he treats them, I'm not surprised. There was more mystical hot air to endure. I did learn something pertinent. The Junimos left that notepad behind, and it's possible to read their script. The translation was a little tricky, but here's what I eventually deciphered:
we the junimos are happy to ade you. In retern we ask for vally gifts
horssradish daffodilll leec dandelion
It continues in much the same fashion.
I saw Penny on the bridge. She gave me a shy little smile, and I smiled back. It's been a while since a pretty girl smiled at me. Unfortunately that blond guy from the Stardrop managed to spoil the moment. He reminded me of those actors they get to play teenagers in soaps. Thoughtlessly confident, smug as a well-fed cat. And it's really irritating.
11TH SPRING
It never quite feels like Spring till the daffodils start blooming. They're not subtle flowers – brash butter-coloured trumpets nodding in the breeze. Leah was right. There must be hundreds, hundreds, of daffodils booming along the lane.
"Continuous as the stars that shine,
And twinkle on the milky way."
Perhaps I will give one to the Junimos. Yoba Below knows it would hardly constitute an effort.
"MISSING
I lost my favourite axe! If you find it, please return it ASAP. I'm having a tough time without it. There's £12.5s in it for whoever finds the thing.
- Robin."
It might have helped if she'd said where she'd last used it. Maybe it's a sign of how small my holding is, but I actually had all afternoon to do … nothing. Nothing in particular. On any other Thursday I wouldn't leave Joja till four, assuming I opened up at six.
So many windflowers along the South path. The first ones to have opened are already looking a bit ragged. The tree limbs are still naked, but there's a distinct haze of green emerging on the hawthorns; feathery leaves of umbellifers brightening the woodland floor. I saw a kingfisher zip away in an electric blue flash, hardly seen but immediately recognised. The air here tastes so clean. More than that, it's so quiet. I don't think I hitherto realised how loud ambient engine noise is in the city.
Stardew Valley's not completely immune to pollution. By the cliff there's drifts of empty and crushed cans. Cheapest of the cheap booze. I shudder to contemplate what a steady diet of that would do to you. Idiots. Why would you litter when you live in a valley like this?
There's that, and the sewer outlet comprehensively spoiling the cliff (Such as shame). A couple of the village kids were unwisely playing nearby, before something scared them off. For a moment, I'll own I thought I could hear echoes from inside the pipe.
Anyway, I found an axe embedded in a stump on the way back. I assumed it was Robin's missing axe, on the basis that there was no rust on the blade. I was right, actually, though I could have easily been wrong. Robin's effusive praise, I suspect, was a ploy to get out of paying up. The conversation somehow swung round to the Community Centre. "It would be great if you could fix that place up! It used to be a really nice building!" Oh indeed? It would be great if I could fix it up? Can you believe the front!
12TH SPRING
"Hi,
Me sell hats, poke. Okay, poke?
Come to old old old haus, poke. Bring coines.
- hat mouse."
Whatever that means. I'm pretty sure it's written in crayon.
Had a pint with Andy at the Stardrop this evening. I'd forgotten the Egg Festival was round the corner. Andy reckons I should let the kids win the egg hunt. It surprises me that anyone over the age of eight competes, to be frank.
That fellow who always stands at the end of the bar – he's always by himself, and he's always here. Emily let on that he's Marnie's nephew. There's something about him now I look twice. A look I've seen at Joja before now, after one too many demanding shifts.
You're not just a jerk, Shane.
13TH SPRING
It looked like most of the village turned out for the festival. Everyone was in their … Sunday best, I suppose the phrase is. Even Leah was out in a new green dress. I don't really have anything nice to wear. I didn't really expect to have a reason to, I suppose. Maybe it doesn't matter. I was a fish out of water anyway. It's not that anyone was rude, exactly. I felt like a tourist, an outsider, someone not entirely wanted. Which is probably why I spent most of the time working my way through the beer and devilled eggs with Andy. The villagers seem to avoid him, brushing him off with polite banalities. He's not exactly personable without a beer in his hand, I grant you, but I'd have thought Lewis would have made an effort.
The kids won the egg hunt anyway.
14TH SPRING
I dreamed I was at JojaMart this morning, with Tilda, just … I don't know. Hanging in there. Shared adversity making friends of strangers.
I never would have made it without Tilda. Irreverent, filthy-mouthed Tilda. I keep hoping she'll text, wanting to catch up. But, she never does. -I really miss you-.
It's a fine morning to get your hands dirty. I spent a quarter hour just looking at the bean poles and strawberries soaking in the morning sunshine. Beyond that, the woodlands edge getting greener every day. Even nettles are handsome in their own way.
Grubbing up the tatties was the job of the morning. They came up like a bucketful of goose eggs. Very much on the small side. Maybe it was a little early to dig them up … but you often see various species of yuppie buying potatoes like this from local markets, right? Damn. In hindsight I should have found out what sells here in Stardew Valley. Oh well. By my reckoning I've not lost money so far. There's still the cauliflowers, and the strawberries, and the beans yet to harvest.
It just doesn't feel like I'm using my days productively enough. I've decided to get a better rod. At £90 it's a risk, but Stardew Valley was a risk in the first place. Tried it out this afternoon at the riverbank, South of Marnie's place, where the daffodils are thickest. The old skill's starting to come back to me. The chub were biting the way chub do – not glamorous fish by anyone's standards, but beggars can scarcely be choosers.
Leah's cottage is a short way upstream (I must have walked past it without realising). We ended up hanging out by chance when she happened by with her sketchpad. There wasn't much in the way of conversation, but that was ok. I like Leah. She's companionable. Albeit elusive.
Saw the Joja manager outside the general store, trying to offload coupons. 50% off coupons sound like a great deal till you find out it's only available for products with an outrageous mark-up. If there's one thing Joja is good at, it's promoting true believers to management. God, it reminds me of JojaPlus week, trying to push those damn credit cards. Targets, targets, pressure, pressure.