Bendigedig Iawn, Fi

We live in a crumbling collection of connected cottages housed in a plot of land of around a quarter of an acre - more than sufficient to manage by ourselves - which, at our time of life seem's a tad counter-intuitive, and which raises the question why stick with it, especially as we're situated at the top of a steep hill that gets steeper and steeper toward the very top, where we live. Frankly, that question has never really entered my mind as I am still counting my lucky what-sits that we found and managed to buy this house in the first place, well into middle-age.

Why am I so particularly appreciative of the fact of living up here in Fairview Heights? I think to answer that, you have to revisit my childhood and the house that I grew up in and only left at the age of twenty-three. I can't nay-say those twenty-three years in any way, as number 16, Winson Street in Winson Green, Birmingham was, in it's day the legendary locus of 'The Lads' [blog posts passim]; and my growing up there is a fundamental part of who I am today at my current advancing age. But the one thing about living there that always left me wanting, was the lack of space. Space and a surrounding of countryside, which I was accustomed to by my annual visits to family in Herefordshire as a child. In short, I wanted more room to breathe.

Eventually moving to North Wales in 1980, I started to get a feeling for a new-found 'openness' in my life, surrounded on the one part by the mountains of Y Eryri, and flanked to the other by the sea. Then, twenty-odd years ago, we found and bought what is now the new Fairview [the name of my Great-Great-Aunt's house in Fromes Hill, Herefordshire], and where we've called home for these last two decades or so. I like the fact that I have a house that I can wander around in, and a plot of land that, although not large in the grand scheme of things - the house likewise - is sufficient to allow freedom of thought and expression. As I say, I loved growing up in the confines of Winson Street's fifty-seven by eleven foot plot - from the rear of the garden to the front door, [which led straight onto the street] - with an outside toilet until I was eight or nine and never a bathroom; but the dreamer in me always wanted pretty much where I am these days. It ain't perfect and needs constant work, but here I can breathe and think, which I think is pretty much the point of existence, don't you think?