Thoughts About Home🏡
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I’ve written briefly about home before and had a big response. I think about it a lot! Sometimes I find the openness of the landscape here all so freeing. At other times I find it too exposed and I dream of living in a valley with trees and no wind. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck right down at the end of the land and that I’m too far from ‘home’.
I feel like I’m on an island and I can’t get off. This is my home but I still question when it will FEEL like home. I don’t want to live in London anymore and I couldn’t wait to get out but it’s still “home”.
There are signs that I am feeling more at home here. There’s a big hill nearby which, when I first moved, I used to ride around. It was my first full time winter here and we had back to back storms and power cuts. I had a horse who was young and fast and we used to quite literally fly around in the wind up and over this hill. We can see it from our door and we drive up over it on the nursery run. It’s a sort of beacon for me, a symbol of home. Do other people do this with landmarks? Search for a “lighthouse” or a “beacon”?
I realise I’ve always done it. In London it was Trellick tower. I could see it from my childhood bedroom. And later from from my grown up bedroom, if I reached out from the skylight. I was always scanning the horizon for it. When I moved to Cornwall, O bought me a linoprint of the famous Trellick Tower to stick on our bedroom wall so I could still see it.
My friend’s mother - a Londoner who has lived in Cornwall for the last thirty years –said “if you are from there it’s sort of the starting point of things”. My oldest school friend says it’s “London Superiority Complex”. She lives in Brighton now but suffers with it too. It’s a sort of arrogance that nowhere could be better. Maybe everyone feels like that about their home? The Cornish love Cornwall and many of them drive around with Cornish flags on their cars.
I have spent literally my whole life going back and forth between London and the countryside and I think, part of my homesickness, might actually be coming from being ON THE MOVE. I love the contrast and I always thought I would have both. Covid and motherhood combined, seem to have run me aground here. This year, I’m breaking out, I keep telling myself. But the problem is that motherhood has also made me lose confidence. What happens if the car breaks down and there’s no hard shoulder. O can’t come with me because of the cows – so I would be responsible for trying to stay calm with two other humans watching me. What about if I stayed in an Airbnb and we got burgled. OK, this is getting silly now, but the point is – it would be scary if I was on my own but with two small children it would be hard to scare someone off with a Le Creuset frying pan, so what would I do?!
My mother said she lost her confidence on horses when she had children. I never EVER thought that sort of thing would happen to me but I think it has. I am writing about this because I know it’s relatable. I am confident this is just a chapter, the tide will come in and I’ll be afloat again - I can’t wait to get back to the big smoke and waltz down Carnaby street saying “oh God it’s just SO crowded, look at all these people” or drive along the Euston Road saying “Eurgh, it’s so polluted” and “the tube is SO gross, I’m sure I caught Covid from all the germs”. And before I know it I’ll be craving the wind and the space and the chit chat with the scary lady in the post office.
So that’s my thought of the week. I was wondering out loud what to write about and said oh well I was thinking about writing about DEATH and O he said I really shouldn’t 😂. It annoyed me. Why shouldn’t I write about death? It happens to all of us. Death of a parent, child, friend, pet. Why can’t we talk about it? Amy Liptrott author of The Outrun (good book, read it) posted on Instagram this week about the death of her father and it got me thinking about how I feel I am getting both numb to death as I age but also how I feel very different and more raw since experiencing the grief of losing a parent and beloved pets. Two completely conflicting feelings about death. So, maybe I will write about death, but I’ll save it for another newsletter…….
I feel like I’m on an island and I can’t get off. This is my home but I still question when it will FEEL like home. I don’t want to live in London anymore and I couldn’t wait to get out but it’s still “home”.
There are signs that I am feeling more at home here. There’s a big hill nearby which, when I first moved, I used to ride around. It was my first full time winter here and we had back to back storms and power cuts. I had a horse who was young and fast and we used to quite literally fly around in the wind up and over this hill. We can see it from our door and we drive up over it on the nursery run. It’s a sort of beacon for me, a symbol of home. Do other people do this with landmarks? Search for a “lighthouse” or a “beacon”?
I realise I’ve always done it. In London it was Trellick tower. I could see it from my childhood bedroom. And later from from my grown up bedroom, if I reached out from the skylight. I was always scanning the horizon for it. When I moved to Cornwall, O bought me a linoprint of the famous Trellick Tower to stick on our bedroom wall so I could still see it.
My friend’s mother - a Londoner who has lived in Cornwall for the last thirty years –said “if you are from there it’s sort of the starting point of things”. My oldest school friend says it’s “London Superiority Complex”. She lives in Brighton now but suffers with it too. It’s a sort of arrogance that nowhere could be better. Maybe everyone feels like that about their home? The Cornish love Cornwall and many of them drive around with Cornish flags on their cars.
I have spent literally my whole life going back and forth between London and the countryside and I think, part of my homesickness, might actually be coming from being ON THE MOVE. I love the contrast and I always thought I would have both. Covid and motherhood combined, seem to have run me aground here. This year, I’m breaking out, I keep telling myself. But the problem is that motherhood has also made me lose confidence. What happens if the car breaks down and there’s no hard shoulder. O can’t come with me because of the cows – so I would be responsible for trying to stay calm with two other humans watching me. What about if I stayed in an Airbnb and we got burgled. OK, this is getting silly now, but the point is – it would be scary if I was on my own but with two small children it would be hard to scare someone off with a Le Creuset frying pan, so what would I do?!
My mother said she lost her confidence on horses when she had children. I never EVER thought that sort of thing would happen to me but I think it has. I am writing about this because I know it’s relatable. I am confident this is just a chapter, the tide will come in and I’ll be afloat again - I can’t wait to get back to the big smoke and waltz down Carnaby street saying “oh God it’s just SO crowded, look at all these people” or drive along the Euston Road saying “Eurgh, it’s so polluted” and “the tube is SO gross, I’m sure I caught Covid from all the germs”. And before I know it I’ll be craving the wind and the space and the chit chat with the scary lady in the post office.
So that’s my thought of the week. I was wondering out loud what to write about and said oh well I was thinking about writing about DEATH and O he said I really shouldn’t 😂. It annoyed me. Why shouldn’t I write about death? It happens to all of us. Death of a parent, child, friend, pet. Why can’t we talk about it? Amy Liptrott author of The Outrun (good book, read it) posted on Instagram this week about the death of her father and it got me thinking about how I feel I am getting both numb to death as I age but also how I feel very different and more raw since experiencing the grief of losing a parent and beloved pets. Two completely conflicting feelings about death. So, maybe I will write about death, but I’ll save it for another newsletter…….