Life in the country has its limitations when you live with people whose only original idea is to install a second refrigerator in the garage. And so I get my inspirations from the internet and from people on the internet with whom I have often lengthy conversations, sometimes in a language other than English just in case another job offer comes along that requires me to be somewhere on the other side of the globe at the beginning of next week.
Fat chance of that to happen — I almost added "anytime soon" but I hate that phrase too much to ever hear myself using it and, in any case, even "anytime soon" is too late now (I also hate the phrase "going forward" because, ever since I moved to the country, I've been going backward).
But as I was saying before my train of thought suddenly left me behind at the station, life in the country has its limitations. For one thing, there isn't anyone to talk to, by which I mean there isn't anyone to talk to on subjects other than the weather and the price of cattle and whether the council is going to fix those potholes on the road.
In my more than thirty years of living in the country, I only met one man with whom I could have a conversation on just about anything. He was a self-taught man who, after enough years in the public service to secure him a modest pension, had moved to the country to live his dream. Thirty years later, and the dream had disappeared in a cloud of constant work to maintain his hundred-acre property when all his mind wanted was some intellectual challenges and his body just wanted some rest.
We met totally by chance, at first outside the post office where we were both collecting our mail, and started talking for hours on the footpath until we had a better idea and invited each other to each other's home. He enjoyed to talk to someone who wasn't interested in the weather but in the dismal state of the world and our place in it.
We developed a mutual respect for each other, he for me having done so much, and I for him sticking it out for so long, and all for the sake of his family who enjoyed their rural living but left it to him do all the work.
He died, almost four years ago to the day, with his dream unrealised and the song still inside him, and I am left still miss our long conversations.
