A Room with a view

“Home is the most important place in world.” – IKEA motto

The Bell ringers are practicing as they do every Monday evening at St. Peter’s Church. It is a sound I have come to know, love and cherish living here. The sound is steady, strong, and clear. It is the sound of normalcy, of all things being well, and as they should be in blessed Barford. It is a sound that touches me deeply, comforts and soothes me.

Here in our new home, I am even closer to this wonderful sound. Our new home is just over the road (across the street) from St. Peter's.

From our new bedroom window, the D.E.B and I have a perfect view of that sweet little church, where we were married just over 8 months ago.

So, this is home.

I know at last how “Home” feels. All my years of wandering, striving rootlessness have come to an end. Playing on our penchant for Merchant-Ivory films, the D.E.B. joking suggested we call our new home “Howard’s End” – as I have now bid adieu to that chapter of my life.

I do feel a sense of ending, and wonderful new beginning. I have never had a place to call my own. And, now, feeling so settled and complete, I realize how unsettled and unfulfilling my past truly has been.

My heart breaks a little with sadness for that girl, the former me. I wish that there were some way that I could go back, speak to her, hug her and tell her everything turns out tremendously in the end. 

“Just wait and see,” I would say to her. “One day, you will live the life you imagine!”

The D.E.B. and I have been in our cute, little house only a very short while. We are still up to our ears in boxes, but things are coming together slowly.

I discovered the incredible pleasure vortex that is IKEA UK in Coventry this weekend. I will never be the same...

The D.E.B. has done an absolutely amazing job of assembling stylish Swedish furniture, for our snazzy “Scandiwegian” house. (For some reason, Barford seems to have more than its fair share of sassy, Scandinavian designed houses that were a rage in Britain in the late 1950s-60s.)

The exterior is not much to write about, very functional, practical. But the inside is pure magic. True to the Nordic artistry, the house is all about light, height and open space.

I feel like I can breathe in this house.

This weekend, I also finally, finally began unpacking boxes that arrived with me from New York over 18 months ago. When I first arrived, the D.E.B. and I were living in a rented house, and so there seemed little point in unloading all my worldly possessions in a place we were only going to pack up and leave eventually.

What joy then, over this past weekend, to re-discover the treasures of my life! It became very clear to me, while perusing these objects and trinkets of days past, that I have been collecting and accumulating my entire life for this very moment.

So many things that I had completely forgotten I owned have now at last re-surfaced to claim pride of place in our new home.

It also a wonder, a joy and a blessing to have found a kindred spirit who shares, enjoys and adores my aesthetic.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. – John Keats