Roads to Joy

We put in a bit of practice, this morning, shifting things out of the New Galloway Town Hall and into Kitty’s Tea Room across the road, preparing for lunch service commencing again on Tuesday. We’d felt so sad to hear, when we returned to this village after our big move away from Sparty Lea, that the pipes had frozen in the Tea Room and flooded the place during the cold snap in December.

That episode had put paid to the weekly LING Lunches, until things dried out, but now the service is due to start again. When I say ‘practice’ I do actually mean that, because we’ll be moving our own things out of Spring Cottage from Friday of this coming week, as we prepare to take possession of a Victorian villa on the outskirts of the village.

The term ‘villa’ is something of a misnomer, a kind of real estate agent-speak, to describe a detached house with a few bedrooms and an extended living room that looks out into the deep garden behind. The front view was, originally, of a large flat flood plain, but a small forest of trees has grown up to obscure that frontage, so we shall enjoy the perspective of the sheep-populated fields behind. We shall each, my beloved and me, have our own designated ‘work’ area, which is a step forward from the restricted space of Spring Cottage, really a one-person bungalow. At this stage of our lives, however, the concept of ‘work’ is almost alien. Work is work in the best sense: doing something productive that you enjoy.

As I may have mentioned in an earlier ‘joy’ post, part of my own work will be renovating a Dryad floor-standing loom that is almost as old as us. But first we have to move in, occupy the place, and get to know it. We had a delightful chat with the owner who is passing it along to us for safekeeping; both of us are reflecting back on the past three decades of our homes. But we must move on, and our commitment is to value the experience of the past history of the new-to-us house, while creating our own family space therein.

There’s a kind of joy, as well as a sort of frisson of fear, associated with this sense of looking forward. I think the fear factor comes from newness, and also yet again the inexorable chores of physically moving things from place to place. Aaaugh! The things that I’ve already placed high in the loft here at Spring Cottage! All must come down for transferral.

But the quiet perseverance of the organisers, assisting in the process of setting up the Lunch service over at Kitty’s, the exuding of calm even through newly discovered mould that must be eliminated, the sense that these things will come good in their own time . . . all of these components of our practice moving exercise have encouraged us for our own move ahead. There is no sense of desperation, of a crucial deadline, on this move. We will work to the pace we can, and we will get there in the end.

A time for everything, and everything in its own good time. I’ll take the joy of that perspective any day of the week.