The Cottage Smallholder

Photo: Pile of books

Quite often I buy or am given packs of greeting cards. They are a great stop gap if suddenly I need to produce a card at a moment’s notice.

Years ago we had a true Picasso moment with a small pack of greeting cards that I had been given and placed in between the books on the shelves in The Rat Room. As this used to be my studio, I had a lot of reference and poetry books up there. In fact this was my core collection of books. The rest were scattered across the rest of the upstairs rooms.

One day Danny was examining the shelves, spotted the spine of the small pack and assumed that it was a book of poems written by Notelet Folder. Clearly European and probably German.

A few weeks later he finally opened this book of poetry and discovered that it was just a cardboard cover holding six small cards. But by then he had already conjured up the sort of poet that Notelet would be. The precious male heir of the Folder family. Danny was so disappointed, he rushed downstairs.
“I thought that this was a book of verse. And it just turns out to be a handful cards in a pretty cover. I didn’t read notelet folder, rather No-tel-let Fol-dur.”

I must admit I was tickled by this and laughed so much that I wept tears of joy. We imagined The Folders bending over the crib and choosing the name for their newborn son.
“Fritz?”
“Max?”
“He looks more like a Notelet.”
“Yes he does.”

D reminded me about Notelet this evening. I had briefly forgotten that Notelet Folder had become a chapter in our annals.  A misunderstood, romantic poet who spends all his money on printing cheap editions of his verse. 

We needed this boost of laughter – so thank you Notelet. Every time that I buy a pack of cards I’ll think of you and smile.