It's a sunny but cold weekend. Perfect stay-at-home weather. Then again, every day at "Riverbend" is perfect stay-at-home weather: if it's sunny but cold, I want to stay at home because it's cold; if it's sunny and warm, I want to stay at home because there's no nicer place to be than by this bend in the river.
Being a bookish person with two left hands when it comes to home repairs or anything mechanical, and with both thumbs missing when it comes to gardening, it didn't take me long to realise that my move to the country wasn't going to be easy, and so already in my first year here I entertained thoughts of selling up again. My best friend Noel, who probably knew me better than I know myself, and feared I would revert to my footloose days and wander the world again, wrote, "Whatever you do, don't sell Riverbend; that would be the ultimate sin."
Somehow I never sold "Riverbend", and somehow I learned to live with my shortcomings, and even managed to make a few repairs and add a few improvements, although I still don't grow my own veggies and, instead of keeping chooks, buy the eggs from a nice lady in the village.
Thirty-two years later, "Riverbend" has become my home like no other before. Thirty-two years! Ever since I'd left home, I had never stayed put in one place for even thirty-two MONTHS! DULCE DOMUM.
"The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome." [Chapter V. DULCE DOMUM "The Wind in the Willows"]
If only you could be here today, Noel, and share a Glühwein with me!
