The dative case

Day 17. Wednesday.

Our market garden is crowned by a single storey thirties bungalow, with the loft built out to accommodate the bedroom Sonya and I share. The estate agent euphemism is ‘dormer window,’ which is daft, because like all other bedrooms you sleep in, it is a ‘dormer’, and if you don’t sleep in it, regardless of shape or position, it isn’t a dormer.

One imagines a description like ‘Church Cottages,’ means a terrace of houses. Not so! The first two numbers are at least half a mile away, while our house sits at the front of a vast rambling piece of land, which ends where the fen begins. I always thought the house was a prefab, because of its appearance. I was ignorant. It would have been many prefabs joined together for it is a rambling monster. The windows are quaint. This was August. In winter on such a morning, with a stiff breeze off the sea, my mother and I would go round with huge reels of Se