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PN Review 275
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This report is taken from PN Review 198, Volume 37 Number 4, February - March 2011.

From a Journal R.F. Langley
2 July 2000
So there is the end of a round pipe, aperture diameter about six inches, its slightly raised rim protruding from the wall surface two feet to the right of the lintel of the kitchen door. The lintel is double, two slabs, one directly on top of the other, of different ages, and probably replacements for an original semi-circular arch, as adjacent exposed remains in the stonework reveal. The top of the door is a double window, two square lights firmly framed, then below that the open door. The wall surface is grey-brown rendering over cream, pink, various stones which are exposed in plenty where the rendering has fallen away. Some stones are large, squared, whitish ones, others brick-shaped, or thinner, brown, pink, buff and so on, the mortaring between them long gone so that there are nooks and cracks and empty corners everywhere. Richard says he saw the Scops owl last night dash out of the pipe at ten minutes past ten, in the half-dusk. It came from there.

We set up two white plastic chairs on the patio opposite the pipe. Ailsa and B. are in the sitting room to the right, door open, light on, playing Scrabble, shouting out to ask us if such-and-such a word exists. The light fans out across the patio from their door. The kitchen light is off. Richard put it off so as not to alarm the owl. But light seeps into the kitchen through an inner ...


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