For weeks—it seemed more like months—he’d been looking for some quiet place where he could work undisturbed. He didn’t care what sort of place—it could be a cottage or a bungalow or even a caravan. But it must be somewhere quiet. That was essential. But apparently impossible. Cottages which were once isolated were now either on a new arterial road or on the perimeter of an airport. Bungalows, he discovered, rarely came singly. More usually they were part of a development and were crowded against each other like hens in a battery. As for caravans—he shuddered at the memory of the camping sites he had visited. Hundreds of caravans stacked in neat rows and thousands of shouting, squalling children, to say nothing of transistor radios bawling without cessation. And then, quite by chance, he saw the advertisement, not in an estate agency, but on a hand-printed card in the small crowded window of a general store where he had stopped to buy something for a picnic lunch.
