by Mike Crowson
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Millicent let herself into the cottage in Baildon and gathered her post as went in. She dumped the post, turned on the music centre and put in a CD. She tidied up a bit, made herself a tuna salad and buttered a crusty bread roll she had bought on the way home, tossing the salad in olive oil and cider vinegar, in time with the beat of Blanket on the Ground.
Until she had finished her meal and washed up it was quite definitely a Country & Western evening she ate to the accompaniment of Dolly Parton, Don Williams and Mary Chapin Carpenter; cleared the plates to Loretta Lynn and made a coffee to Johnny Cash. The singers and the songs belonged largely to her teenage years, but her mother and brother had both been Country and Western music lovers and, though that part of her life was gone as surely as her life with Carlos, the music remained.
Once her work was done, she changed the CD to one of the Chilean group Quimantu, turned the music down very low and sipped her coffee reading more of Footprints in the Psychic Wilderness.
Chapter 14: Saturday 18th August 2001