On the 31st October, I returned to my hometown after spending the previous four months – eighteen weeks in all, or 126 days if you prefer – living from my sisters spare room in northern Cumbria.
This was not planned, or at least not for that long. I expected to be away for a couple of weeks, a month at the most, while the legal stuff went through on my new home. How naïve of me to underrate the ability of solicitors to drag things out. I underestimated how they work to a pace that doesn’t in any way take into account of how it may affect your life, and how impervious they are to criticism and complaint.
However, I could bang on about this and the archaic system we have in the UK that helps result in 1 in 3 house purchases failing. The government are currently looking at a major overhaul to our centuries old system and I’ll leave it with them.
Instead I’ll look at the positives. I saw a lot more of my family than I normally would. I learned how to drive at faster speeds because as I’ve discovered, out in the country the police are largely absent and speed limits are somewhat open to interpretation and the guy sitting on your taillight at 60mph on a country road apparently has to be somewhere really, really quickly.
That said, if a herd of cows or sheep need to get somewhere no-one’s going anywhere until they have ambled past at a pace similar to a solicitor at work.
I woke most days to views of beautiful landscapes and sun-kissed valleys and fields. I learned patience when purchasing anything in the local shop that has queuing systems that are arbitrary and, shall we say, flexible.
I came to accept, more or less, that to get to a supermarket I may have to drive 12 to 17 miles (depending on the supermarket) instead of my usual 3 miles (depending on any supermarket). But I’ve also seen the seven days a week work in the farms and fields that put a lot of those essential foodstuffs on the supermarket shelf, no matter how near or far.
Frankly I’ve lost count of the fascinating history lessons from Carlisle Castle and Cathedral in the north of the county, to the birth of a Roman Garrison town at Maryport on the coast. I spent a couple of hours at a Pencil Museum (yes that’s right, a museum dedicated to the pencil) and watched three wonderful productions at a theatre beside a magical lake.
I’ve nipped out of the county to the home of the Bronte sisters in next door Yorkshire and back again to walk the corridors of a genuinely haunted castle in Muncaster, and learned enough about Beatrix Potter and poet William Wordsworth to regale my friends for hours. Or more likely, until they have a chance to change the subject.
There were long, long days when my morale was really low. My life was on hold and I felt utterly powerless to change things. At those points I had to remind myself that I did have the power of perspective; it was summer in a wonderful part of the country, not the dark long days of winter. I was free to roam wherever I chose for as long as I needed to.
And now I’m having to re-adjust to a different pace again, one that has become unfamiliar, and it’s not coming as easy as I expected. In the towns and cities I know so well I’ve learned having been away that people move differently here, have a more hurried and tunnel visioned approach to their day.
But I’m happy to be in my new place, even if for the first two weeks there was no internet (no internet!!) and for a week no hot water. I was boiling water in pans and using public WiFi. So much for returning to civilisation!
It is going to take a good while for me to see the unfamiliar walls of my new property as home. I’m going to ease back into my creative pursuits alongside decorating, getting to know new neighbours. But I’m embracing change and I’m learning to look forward to a life that takes with it the best memories and lessons of the past as a platform for the future.
A future with cows very much in the rear view mirror.
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 
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