A Moment of Peace

Late summer.  A warm, muggy night.  Warm enough to be outside in just a cardigan - rare for me, as I normally require a duvet style skiing jacket at all times of the year.  I'm feeling so, so tired.  August, which should be downtime for me, has been so busy.  And now it's nearly over and term starts the week after next.  We have a few days off following the Bank Holiday but I can hardly afford it and know that I will suffer big time as a result, once the tsunami of term begins.

Sprocket and I were out in the garden for his evening constitutional before bedtime.  I sat in our wooden boat shaped arbor beneath the Leylandii trees and leant back for a quick snooze.  The dog leapt up beside me and we sat together, viewing the house.  We could see H, buzzing about inside, preparing to return to M---------.  We could hear passing voices.  There is something about viewing a house from outside in at dusk, when the lights are on and life goes on inside.  And you can just sit and watch.  It was a moment of peace and a moment of pleasure.  The house looked warm and inviting in the dim light.  Home.  It is hard to believe that we've been here for nearly a year.  Hard to believe that it is actually ours.  We are very lucky and, too frequently, we forget that.

Reading stuff like this, it makes it sound like some people have charmed lives.  A wonderful house, a wonderful family, a wonderful dog, a glorious garden.  But we need to take a reality check now and again.  Of course, life as portrayed in this blog is not life as it really is.  Life in reality is filled with problems.  We all have problems, each one of us.  But I have to protect the innocent and the purpose of this blog is to talk about the house and our lives in relation to it, not to purge our problems in public.  But I would hate my reader to think that we lead charmed lives.  We don't.  We are ordinary people who work hard and who confront issues on a daily basis.  We are stressed, we are tired and we argue.  We never seem to have enough time.  We worry about money and wake in the night in cold sweats at what we have done.  Please don't get the impression that life is all roses, John Lewis and builders.  It is not.

But, every now and then, on a warm summer's evening with the dog at one's side, there is a moment of peace, where the shortcomings of the house are disguised by the poor light, when it all looks perfect and all is well with the world.  By three o'clock this morning, wide awake in bed, no doubt, it will be back to reality.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night