There is something about returning home after a really good holiday. Nestled in your heart are a multitude of memories which is why I added an extra week off work. I want to marinade in them fully, unpack slower and revisit the many smiles that occurred while I was away. We had a short (but what felt just right) visit to the UK. This is somewhere we lived 20 something years ago and where a branch of the family tree still lives along with dear friends that I have known half of my life. It had been a while since we had steps on English soil, pre covid in fact, and I won’t deny there was an element of anxiety about travel, especially so far and in what feels like a world of chaos. It turned out my fears were unfounded. Whilst the news bleats on with ever increasing woe, the people I reconnected with or met on our travels were kind and joyful which I found reassuring. For all the madness in the world for the most part people are still good.
With time short the trip was full. I had a wish list of places to visit, gardens of course, but I also wanted to meet people who I had only known virtually as well as art I wanted to see. My aim was to come home with a cultural hangover (another reason for the week off work). Days were split into activities as my little trip it app bugled with scheduled events. Visits to Monk House, Charleston House, Chelsea Physics Garden, Farley House sat along side Tracey Emin, Frida Kahlo and Schiaparelli exhbitions. A collection of strong women to echo the post menopausal voice I had found alongside the wisdom of 50 years on earth. It all felt very right.
But there was also something else that I didn’t anticipate. The reminder of the 25 year old young woman, who packed up her tramping pack and followed a fella who she had known for 6 months to another country, knowing if she didn’t she would regret it for the rest of her life. A country that at the time felt the same but was different in small ways that at times felt overwhelming. She navigated it all with wide eyed naivety and followed along like she always had those around her, thankfully they were good people to know and cherished friendships followed. It was nice to walk along the memory of her as I took the tube and saw St Paul’s from the distance. To stand in a super market and then remember you needed a pound to get the shopping trolley. It was also revisited as we speed along in our little hire car in the narrow roads of Scotland wishing we were in our little Golf GT1 that had terrible suspension, a little sunroof and took corners like a dream. To sit with her 25 years later seemed a full circle moment. I am glad I remembered her.
As I sort through photos, piles of books and the collection of emphera that I shuttled back to NZ, I wish that we weren’t so far away. That a 42 hour door to door travel wasn’t required to sit with friends and family that you cherish and I then could ignore the niggle in the heart that comes with the sentences of “I hope we get to do this again” as we all get older. The garden is emerging as too is inspiration both of which felt dormant due to winter days. Notes are scribbled on paper as I unpack and sort clothes and then get distracted by a book I brought or a dog who needs an ear scratch or the sunlight hitting the garden in a way that sees me reaching for my camera. I heard the birds this morning a faint hum of the dawn chorus that will greet me in the months to come as the days get lighter. To sit in a moment of delight of where you have been and where you are going feels like a small gift. I can’t wait to see how what I have seen and felt will unfold. One thing I do know there will be a lot of hollyhocks ala Vanessa Bell’s garden in Charleston.
