O still small voice of calm.....

The Narrow Road to Deepest Norfolk

A squadron of geese flies under the radar....  It wakes my wanderlust.....

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

 

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

From our current home to where we are going to be living at the end of January, much of the journey follows the A10, a narrow route to the north. Shrouded in the mists of Cambridgeshire we pause at Ely, on the way, an aspiring island rising from the swampy realm of Hereward the Wake, a kind of pre Brexiteer in reverse, as he resisted the Norman invasion....

How times change....  This celestial lantern is not lit by smoky reeds.....

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home

 

Matsuo Basho

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Yes, home is where the heart aches....  And, to take our minds off the miseries of modern times, we have decided to go back in time, to upsize, to live it large.... We are moving house and home, cat and all....

As some will know, Amanda is a victim of Frontotemporal Dementia (semantic variant) and last summer I made the executive decision that we needed to have room to comfortably accommodate residential carers, and for our daughters to stay and help with her care without us all tripping over each other.  This meant moving further from the London region, and, for various reasons, I found what I was looking for in Norfolk, not far from King's Lynn.

There was something appealing about this property, once the village bakery, with its locally quarried Carr stone facade, and sufficient space to park an horse and cart.... So, after several months of indecision, complications with surveyors and builders, the arcane ways of solicitors and the difficulties of Covid, we now find that we have exchanged contracts and are committed to move....

The locals seem tranquil.... (when they're not whooping that is....)

There is a gentle air about the place which makes me think that my increasingly cantankerous nature may be calmed here....

(Non, I have no egrets....)

 

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Matsuo Basho

 

 

The local residents come in all shapes and sizes.  A senior doctor in the surgery just down the road is also the Queen's personal physician.  While another old fellow regularly takes the waters at nearby Blakeney Point.....

In fact, as our deal is sealed, other seals deal with the sea.... (please don't look at me like that....)

While others bathe in the shingles of time (which can be irritating)....

And yet others display what looks suspiciously like post-natal depression (if you can pardon the anthropomorphism.....)  

Or is it just that it is Sunday afternoon and the kids won't let you sleep?

Whale.... it takes all sorts, and you can't win everything all the time....

Winter solitude-
in a world of one colour
the sound of the wind.

Basho Matsuo

 

 

It's a wintry kind of landscape, brushed by cold winds from the far north, shrouded by frets and fogs and muddy airs....

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

Matsuo Basho

But I think we may find peace here.  I hope so.  The skies are immense,

And the village glows with a kind of subtle Christmas cheer that gives me hope that, on balance, the years to come may not all entirely be a waste of breath.....

We are now committed to move in a month.  I will let friends know the address when it is all over.....