Greta Clement is an old-fashioned character.

This was written as part of a series of short meditative pieces for a new book project. It began with the phrase, ‘old-fashioned character.’ Aren’t we all? Who wants to be new-fangled?

Greta Clement is an old-fashioned character. You’ve met her sort before. A famous writer invented her, or someone like her: first name Agatha, which is the perfect name for an aunt who might also be a parrot. Aunt Agatha dressed in parrot green. It’s an alarming sort of colour, but then so are parrots. They speak. Birds should not speak, they should tweet. Aunt Agatha likes to tweet when no one is looking. She is tweeting about her characters who are quite famous, especially the old lady with the wizened face and sharp blue eyes. She lives in an English village not a million miles away from here with a fine array of characters. Greta Clement might be one, she could quite easily be one, she has that slightly faded old-fashioned look. I don’t want to say gormless because that would be dismissive. Greta isn’t gormless, she is just a little behind. Belated, out of step with the modern, and you can hardly blame her. Greta wouldn’t know how to switch one of these ghastly things on and off. It would slip out of her bag, and she’d tread on it. Bob’s your uncle, or Bob your phone is dead why on earth did you bother?

In old fashioned stories telephones are important. Dolly Bantree calling in from the Manor full of excitement at what she has seen -- his hands around her throat squashing the life out of her -- Dolly is insistent, she spits at the phone. The next day she rings and tells the vicar, but she gets the vicar’s wife. In any sort of mystery telephones are important, in any sort of life. So there is Greta Clement answering the phone to cross parishioners. That sort of thing still goes on in small towns: wherever there is a church with a steeple there are people.

My point is that Greta reminds me of people I’ve met in books, and people I’ve met in life. Not everywhere is new-fangled, not everywhere is on the map. Aunt Agatha refuses to be. She would never carry one of those devices that yell at you telling you what to do. They tweet, they vibrate, they ping and pong, and your wrists bend and turn at their every beck and call. It’s not natural, it’s a kind of torture. Aunt Agatha would never suffer that sort of war, for it is a war, and in war there is no peace until the bitter end. I think the end has already arrived. It’s game over.

Aunt Agatha knows this, because she has peeked up from her mossy mound with her green parrot hat on and taken a quick look around. ‘No thank you very much, I don’t think so!’ Aunt Agatha lays down her green head and resumes her nice long rest. She’s seen quite enough to know she’s not missing anything. It was the perfect time to go.

FOR SABRINA WHO LOVES THE ORDER OF WORDS.