The one that got lost.

The man, who runs the badminton club wears glasses, has a white pointed goatee, a hearing aid and a small black dog.

The small black dog is playing in the ditch where a small stream runs alongside the road, it is possibly chasing butterflies.

The road is also itself a backwater; not many cars use it and so it is a popular place to walk a dog, ride a bike, run or even go canoeing.

You can’t canoe on the road of course, nor on the small stream, but there is an old wooden hut where you can hire canoes and then float along the river that runs parallel on the other side of the road.

The man who runs the canoe concession also wears glasses but he is younger than the badminton club president, and is clean-shaven and has curly hair.

He drives a red Citroen 2 CV along the road to get to work, between the stream and the river.

Nobody is canoeing today though, perhaps because it is going to rain, perhaps because it’s Friday or probably because autumn has started.

Along the road where the black dog is playing, the tress are saying goodbye to their leaves; mushrooms are sprouting in the grass around the old tree stumps.

The swallows have already left.

On the weir that stretches across the river a heron is standing, staring down into the clear water.

It is looking for fish.

There are fish in this river, but they are clever. Signs along the bank announce that carp lie under the shade of the overhanging trees waiting to be caught.

They aren’t.

They are waiting to be left alone.

If you stand on the bridge you can watch other fish swimming away from where the heron stands.

No one has ever caught a fish from this bridge, though every Sunday someone tries; maybe they are just not interested in going to church with the rest of the village and choose the solitude and pointlessness of the bridge in preference to the pew.

The church stands at one end of the bridge, behind the antique shop that once was a Citroen garage; the man that runs the canoe concession is disappointed that the mechanic sold up and retired; with the exception of the car he drives he has little time for antiques.

The woman who runs the antique shop has little time for the man who runs the canoe concession; she never goes canoeing and equally rarely will suffer a fool.

Not that the canoe man is a fool.

The woman who runs the antique shop considers anyone who doesn’t like antiques a fool.

She can be scary.

It is not the colour of her hair, or the length of her dress but the way her eyes evaluate your wallet as soon as you walk in her door.

This is a shame, as her shop is full of beautiful things from another time; a place where most beautiful things reside.

At the back of the church is the town hall, a wedding is taking place today.

A woman with a saxophone, another with a clarinet and a man with a drum are serenading the guests who climb the steps to the ceremony.

The steps that lead to the ceremony are older than time itself, they are older than anything in the antique shop.

But they are not for sale.

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Some things have no price.

And can’t be bought anyway.

Like chasing a butterfly in a ditch, which the small black dog is doing.

The dog belongs to the president of the badminton club.

The president has a white goatee, a hearing aid and, somewhere, a lot of badminton racquets.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The One That Got Lost - formally published in the Archives but clearly intended for publication in The 2018 series - Rounds.