Wavy line tattoo on a finger

The hose has finally given up on the far bed, so I spent the morning dragging it back across the allotment on my knees, looping it the way Dad taught us, over and under, never kinked. Mrs Okafor from plot twelve came over to watch and said I was knitting a scarf for a giant. She is not wrong. The thing kept wanting to go wherever the ground dipped, so I let it, and it wound between the leeks and the rhubarb in wide, lazy waves until the path looked as if someone had drawn it in pencil and forgot to lift the nib.

Dad's rule was that a hose remembers every bend you put in it, so you must never leave it knotted in one place. I have thought about that rule more than I expected this year. The beans have come up crooked on the south side, the shed roof needs felting, and the council letters sit unopened on the windowsill. Still, each evening I walk the hose out to the water butt and back, and the curve it leaves in the soil is the only thing all week that has gone exactly where I meant it to.

Yesterday I found his old tin of carpenter's pencils in the shed, the ones with chewed ends, and I did something silly. I drew that wave on the back of a council envelope, then painted it in red on the gatepost. It looks like a river from the lane. It looks like the line on the wind gauge he used to tap every morning before breakfast. I have decided I prefer it as a river.

Come at the weekend and bring your boots. I will show you the gate, and you can tell me whether it is a river or a hose, and we will decide together which one needs watering.

Love, Aunt Bea