My fifth week confined to barracks as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer. I drive to the supermarket about twice a week, otherwise my horizon has shrunk to a vase of cut daffodils on the kitchen table, and through the window a fluorescent orange football in the garden with the grass growing up around it, and in the field beyond furry heifers enthusiastically nosing up hay from their circular feeder.
Nevertheless I am far from unsocialised. The house is close to the centre of the village. The front door is always open — you enter via a conservatory — and there are plenty of visitors. Some of these stand at the door and diffidently call out for permission to enter, others stroll in. The doctor waltzes in like a ham Oscar-winning actress breasting wild applause on her way to the podium.
The vicar plods in as though there were not the slightest difference in her mind between the public space and the domestic.
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