For Jim and May

 

‘This building turned its back on the street and its face to the wilderness, so that the windows looked out upon what seemed open countryside.’ Charles Fenn, Lawn Road Flats’ resident.

 

and my mother and father

 

At six o’clock from Bourton-on-the-Hill

The bells rang out above the clumps of oak;

A lighter peal from Longborough lingered on;

Moreton-in-Marsh came echoing from the vale …

So gently broke the waves of sound

On a still evening of enormous light

That, when they ceased, I almost seemed to hear

From open church-doors village voluntaries

A mile and more away.

John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells (1960)