How many times have I been away and come back again; back to this very spot in my house, in my room, on my bed, looking out on the garden, a verdant celebration of summer. A sufficient number of times that I don’t feel unsettled by the fact that it’s not at all unsettling to be back. It doesn’t feel strange – I’m used to coming home, and I’m enjoying the sense that perhaps this time above all others I am returning as an even greater composite of experiences; such that, although appearances suggest little changes here (except for the enormous new Sainsbury’s, whose megalithic size is disturbingly out of all proportion to the population of the town), my perspective does – evolving and shifting in light of where I’ve come from – so that Home manages to retain its comfort without being exactly the same as when I left.
But the transition has been made easier by a glorious homecoming week of folk music, dancing and sunshine, green and yellow fields, wild flowers, white chalk cliffs, turquoise-blue sea, winding country lanes with bursting hedgerows, rambling roses, (and local cider). All the things I see in my mind’s eye when I’m away and trying to convey to people the beauty of this land. Particularly when the sun shines, which it does sometimes. But even when it doesn’t, I am struck by the extraordinary natural diversity of such a small landmass - particularly having spent the last five months in two such enormous countries.
The more time I spend away, the more I return a product of other places, which entails an enormous sense of liberation and an inspiring relationship with the wider world. But alongside this is the comfort that stems from my relationship with Home – the visceral sense I have had over the last week of being enveloped by this landscape, a consciousness of how deeply ingrained it is in me and I am in it. The security of knowing that no matter how far I go or how long I go for, I can always come home and find a part of myself in this soil and in these trees.
