Cabbage Soup

After wrapping the pansies I bought yesterday in polythene because of the snow, I headed down to Katy's for Song Circle.
She lives off Marylebone High Street and the yummy smell of soup curled down the stairway as I puffed and panted up a million flights of stairs to her eyrie above the chimney pots. She was disappointed recently to discover that the Grand Piano she'd been given couldn't get up the stairs, so she has bought something like eight ukeleles to compensate. They hang on her walls, twinkling with potential.
We sat and drank tea till Nadya arrived. Our subject has been 'house' and Katy played hers first- almost a mazurka, it was a bouncy song about how much she loves her flat and how she'd like to win the lottery so she could buy it! The lady upstairs gave her wardrobes when she moved out the other day and Katy has tidied up and was excited to show us. She has wonky floors like me and has to shove bits of folded cardboard under the legs of things to stop them tipping drunkenly; it made me optimistic that contrary to my fears, my house is not in imminent danger of falling down.
Nadya's song wasn't finished yet, but we've decided to make the next session 'finished songs'.
Her song was all about the flavours of living in Tottenham- all the things she can hear around her from her house. Nadya's songs are simple and poetic, and I told her that she should keep them like that: it's a good style to start off from.
I was last, and mine wasn't finished either; but I remembered enough of it to do it. Mine was the House On The Hill, about living in a beautiful house that has no heart because it doesn't want people in it, just sunshine. Nadya told me at was the best song I have written so far.
The woman across the road told me while I was moving out that the two other families who had lived there before us had divorced too. It was a beautiful but poisonous house, destroying three marriages.
I didn't tell the family who moved in. Maybe they will break the pattern: I hope so.