No.8 Porridge Probably

In the little town were the little girl lived there was a big abbey that was hundreds of years old. The town had grown up around the abbey, with some of the oldest buildings huddled close up to the abbey gates.

Although the abbey was a ruin it was still impressively large and tall. It had no roof or floors but the main walls and tower were mostly still intact. There was also an area next to the abbey that was much more in ruins. The remains of the walls there weren’t very high, barely enough to make out the shape of where rooms once where. The little girl presumed that these ruined rooms were once storerooms, kitchen, bedrooms, for the former occupants.

The abbey had only the smallest of boundary walls which was just begging to be climbed over by small children. The little girl and her friends would climb over this small wall and wander around the ruins. Impressive though the main building was, for some reason the little girl was much more interested in the more ruined area of what had been the more functional rooms. She loved to think about what each of the rooms had been for, where was the kitchen, who made breakfast there, and who ate it? She loved to walk through the gaps where doors once where and didn’t understand why her friends liked to climb and walk over the walls when there were doorways to be used.

In time, and as if to deliberately spoilt any fun, the boundary walls surrounding the abbey were made higher and more of a challenge to scale. They were so high you couldn’t even see over them. The little girl didn’t like to do anything wrong (if she could help it) so never attempted to climb the walls the were so obviously meant to keep children out! She so missed the playground that was the abbey ruins, the time she had spent there, and the connection she’d felt with history. What did monks eat for breakfast? Porridge probably.