She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic two girls in this strange and lonely house. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older.

She is nearly twenty one and very bitter with life. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear.

I have decided my poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it.ĭrips from the roof are plopping into the water butt by the back door.

And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen house. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. That is, my feet are in it the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea cosy. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. Culture See all of librarian Nancy Pearl's 'under-the-radar' picks.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith