Dante's head in stained glass

I've been preparing to head off on a cross country journey to Dorset in order to buy a second car, a bargain, I hope. A friend of ours rang us out of the blue two days ago saying that her family member who was 90 years old had to stop driving, and did we want her car? I checked the details mulled it over for about thirty minutes and said, 'Yes please!'

There were some complexities to the arrangements but I managed to sort them out and rang my dear friend Patrick to check whether he could help me by picking me up from his local station. He agreed and also let me spend the night at his lovely cottage before then driving me the next day to collect the car.

Patrick and I met in the early 1960s at a school in our teens, and we've stayed in contact ever since. I also got to see his elder sister Merrily H., who lives in a nearby village, and we went there for tea and cake on the way back from the station.

As dusk arrived and with a fine Irish whisky in hand I saw the interesting light coming through a small window in the corner of this room. It looks out onto the street of a tiny hamlet about six miles from Dorchester. Patrick was busy preparing food for our evening meal so I spent a couple of minutes trying to catch the light.

Patrick told me later that he was given this stained glass window by the mother of Nique, who was his girlfriend before he went to university. She'd spotted it in an antique shop and thought Patrick would like it. She was right. More than fifty years later it still adorns his home.

It is a profile of the head of 'Dante', as is written at the top of the glass. In a scroll at the bottom are added these words – 
'the world-worn Dante sighed
And somewhat grimly smiled'


I like it very much.