Dressing-table, Sunday afternoon

Flowers from M that arrive at work on the grey Monday of last week, come home with me to sit on my dressing table, make it feel like that of the leading lady in a 1950s stage show, opening night. A dressing table that I bought at auction a few years back, dark, varnished wood, sanded down over a summer weekend in a Norfolk garden, primed, painted with Farrow & Ball, two layers, hard work, dry, cracked hands. Sunday's slants of weak winter sunlight, the first I have seen for days, creeping across my bedroom walls, bouncing off the mirror as the sun drops behind the rooftops.