Going away with friends
It’s so fun, going away with friends. Sharing a kitchen and finding out which of these absolute heathens puts knives in the dishwasher, learning who falls asleep during every movie, who’s always suggesting we all play a game, who seems to have a catlike aversion to showering (me, I am the last one). It’s fun to see your friends in pyjamas, to find out what jobs they volunteer to do, to learn how much ribbing they can take before their morning coffee.
We spent the weekend in Hungerford at a friend’s brother’s house. It was my favourite kind of British home* - absolutely full of treasure, but nothing was precious. A house whose rhythms are set by the two cats, two dogs, and lizard who all live there and need regular feeding and care. Welcoming and well-loved, but with some bits that truly make a house your home - broken door handles that need to be turned just so, dusty base boards, those piles of papers that could absolutely go in the bin but someone thinks there might be something important in there! so they’re kept, just in case, in a neat stack on the piano. A home that is teeming with life, where nobody has to be too careful, where anyone can flop on the sofa or help themselves to whatever’s in the fridge or take a quick snooze in the sunny conservatory without fear of rebuke.
Our friend’s brother’s house backed onto the marshes - as I believe they’re called - that run through the town and oh, how I loved to be near the water! Clear and clean, a small river flows through the marshes towards the River Kennet, with a canal punctuated with locks another hundred yards along. Boys off school during half term were fishing in the shallow water, scientists were dragging nets through the riverbed and counting bugs, canal boats were moored up alongside the bank with plumes of smoke cheerily filling the air with the smell of warm autumn fire. Though I like where I live very much, I miss the streams, ponds and lakes of my childhood in the Midwest, and even though I never got my feet wet, stepping out to walk along the river in Hungerford was cleansing.
* I feel like Bridget’s family home in Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy does a great job of bringing this exact type of British home to the screen.