Above a toilet in our bathroom is a little 4 inch by 9 inch pen and ink tinted watercolor of our backyard in Plymouth, Devon where Robert and Anne played in the sand pile, collected snails for John to cook and eat at a penny a snail, and got humped by Winston, the adolescent bulldog, from time to time which we discouraged. As I stand and piddle and look at it at eye level over the years I remark to myself what memories that little painting produced 58 years ago returns to me, whereas they could spring from a paragraph now, to a book if I had the energy. John Polochi, a general surgeon, now dead after a career in Kingston Ontario. Susan, pursuing her art in England at the time and coping with his gastronomical needs including garden snails, small birds which he trapped and boiled sheep's heads for face meat. He helped me rake up all the broken glass from our back yard and clean and drain the bomb shelter, those residual remains from the heavy blitz in Plymouth in 1941, to make it safe for our children. They loved them too. Canadian and Italian, we were all strangers in an other's land.
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