After spending so many years surrounded by chaos at home, it always feels a little bit odd when travelling to find life suddenly becalmed. So much so that I slept in this morning. I can’t remember the last time I slept through until 9 in the morning - especially as the clocks changed last night - winding back an hour.
Thankfully the house we are staying in is more modern than the cottage we stayed in during our visit to Hay on Wye. I keep wondering how or why the cottage came to be - if the owner perhaps lives in it for part of the year, and opens it to visitors at other times. There are clothes in the bedroom, craft materials in the study, and food in the kitchen cupboards.
The kitchen certainly caught us out - we stopped at a supermarket en-route to buy some basic groceries for breakfasts and then discovered a filled fridge and a sticky note to help ourselves.
I’m always amazed at the “put together” nature of houses where there are no children. One of my co-workers doesn’t have children, and I’m always a little envious of the lack of clutter throughout his house. Perhaps he’s envious of our chaotic family too.
There was a moment a few days ago - while out with close friends - when we were congratulated for making it to nearly twenty five years together - and having brought up three children that were not our own for the greater part of that time. I suppose you don’t really think about it when you’re in the thick of it - and not everybody is lucky enough to have the same experience.
Except it’s not all luck. It’s f*cking hard sometimes. Nobody has good days every day. Nobody is the best version of themselves every day. Although I tend to avoid any sort of self congratulation, I will admit to character traits that help enormously. I tend to be happiest when those around me are happy - or rather, if I can keep everybody else happy enough, many they’ll leave me alone for at least some of the time.
I’ve written in the past about “going to the well” though - that if you’re doing it too often, you start to worry how much water might be left.
Like I said - we all have our good days. We all gave doubtful days too.
Anyway.
We eventually made it out this morning, and wandered around Wells together. After walking into town last night, we chose the car today. It’s a little over a mile walk, and bad weather was forecast for later in the day. We almost didn’t make it any further than the long stay car park though - I stood with another family for quite some time, trying to install yet another mobile app for a car park while holding phones in the air to get one bar of mobile signal, and then filling out more information than a passport application. I thought my other half was going to burst into flames in temper.
After exploring every single clothes shop in Wells - don’t ask - I suggested we might get something to eat, and we ended up sitting high about the street from a part of the Bishop’s Palace walls, in a small cafe called “The Bishop’s Eye”.
We chose a vegetarian sharing platter, which turned out to be quite incredible. The only thing not quite so incredible was a group of writers sitting behind us that insisted on reading their writing to each other out loud - for the entire cafe to “enjoy”. The lines from the Hitchhike’s Guide to the Galaxy came to mind - about Vogon Poetry being the second worst in the known universe - causing listeners to gnaw their own arms off. I suspect I have now heard the worst poetry in the known universe. Quite how I made it out with both arms intact is still something of a mystery.
Rather than eat out this evening, I bought food from the supermarket, and cooked back at the house. A pasta tray-bake that turned out remarkably well. I fixed the cooker clock while doing it - setting cooker clocks seems to be my speciality when visiting other people’s houses.
This evening I’ve started reading “Impossible Creatures” - a book I picked up in the wonderful book-store in Wells high-street earlier today. It’s really a children’s book, but I don’t hold with any of the snobbishness that seems to pervade the literary world. A good story is a good story, and can be enjoyed by anybody if they drop their prejudices.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and polish off the left-over pasta we had for dinner, before heading to bed. I fully expect over-sleeping in the morning. Of course, having said that, I’ll wake up like an automaton at 6am, and wonder how my brain manages to do that so reliably.