Change of view

We have just finished another spurt of smallish refurbishments on our 150-year-old house. I love making changes where I live: the imagining, researching options and costs, tactical planning, and then afterwards putting things back together. The delight of imagining life in a different space, and how it might work more easily or open up new options than we experience now. The other parts—getting bids and doing the work: all the dust, uprooted activities to other locations, not finding things that are in boxes everywhere—that’s not as much fun.

But afterwards there is the joy of the space reimagined coming to life! Ohhh, look how the light now filters across the room differently. The shape of the new kitchen window subtly divides the outside view into big sky and lush garden foliage. And I can now open the window to let the fresh air flow inside.

There is a differently echoing sound in the hallway with wood flooring, and the light bounces off the floor too creating new warmth. For me, especially living in a Northern country, quality and abundance of light is everything. Making the most of our light year-round is a constant quest.

Because we replaced the flooring in my writing office, I took that opportunity to completely flip my furniture around so my desk is facing the opposite direction, and I moved the bookcase and other objects to new places too.

I still have a view down the garden, but beyond the garden are lush green trees and bushes framed against brick buildings. I thought I might not like the view of buildings, but at this time of year, the previous direction faces a big (albeit beautiful) green leafy elm tree and a deep purple plum that completely fills the view so there is little depth of vision or variety when I look out.

Now I look towards the varied buildings surrounded in the foreground by leafy foliage of all sizes and textures. Above and beyond the buildings is the direction from where our coastal weather arrives, featuring white to deep charcoal grey puffy clouds racing across a periodic deep blue sky as the late spring storms blow through.

It has been mostly grey and rainy since I’ve changed my office around, so I’m not sure if it will work as well in winter when the lower-angled sun may directly hit my monitor. But that is a future problem! For now I am enjoying my changed view, beloved pictures in new places, and other wall adornments, including my beautiful sari and many of my fun and colourful handbags hanging on a row of pegs.

One main purpose of moving where one sits or changing one’s point of view periodically is to change your routine and to see things anew. The things that you glance at once you change places are not the same as before and as a result, your brain notices. Your brain stops and has to identify what it is seeing and not skip over the familiar whilst thinking about something else, at least the first few times. This happens when I turn to grab a book from a direction in the room where the bookcase is no longer: right, I moved the bookcase. So I pause for a moment to find where the book is, now, and in that moment my thoughts disassemble and reform. Refreshed again.

It’s why travel to new places is so inspiring. And why I love this poem that I included in my first-ever post here on Substack:

And if travel is like love, it is,

in the end, mostly because

it’s a heightened state of

awareness, in which we are

mindful, receptive,

undimmed by familiarity

and ready to be

transformed. That is why

the best trips, like the best

love affairs, never really

end. - Pico lyer

I moved a lot when I was young, and even once I left home at eighteen, I moved every few years. Our last house in Plymouth was one of the longest places I’ve ever lived (8 years!) and we are closing in on 4 years in this house. It is natural for me to want to change things up every so often, as perhaps some kind of pressure valve release. We have made a few changes over the years to make this house our own, or, as the Brits say, “put our stamp on it”. But I do wonder: did all my early years of moving every year or so create this need in me to constantly change things up?

Like expiring food from the groceries, do I have a ‘restless date’, I wonder?

In a final completely unrelated note, some of you know we like to go watch the annual local sheepdog trials each year. I wrote about our first visit here:

Watching dogs and sheep

·

June 8, 2023

Pete and I are dog people. We really enjoy dogs and believe it is cruelty to US that we can’t have any of our own since we travel so much. However, we’ve learned several tricks to keep dogs in our lives in other ways.

If you want more, there is a little more detail about the drama between the sheep and dogs during the trials in this subsequent post:

This year, they had to cancel the first day’s event due to fierce winds, but Sunday the show continued. It was cloudy and a bit chilly but we managed to squeeze our low-slung chairs near the front of the huge crowds to watch the dogs, sheep and handlers negotiate the course. The sheep seemed to be a LOT more obedient this year, and there were fewer stand-offs between ornery sheep and ever-patient dogs. The event is a charity fund-raiser and the dogs and their handlers come from all over the UK. This is always one of the gems of the year for us, and a perk of living on an agriculturally-rich island. I was so gratified to see the hundreds of spectators attending, which grow bigger every year.

I guess to try to tie this all together (loosely?): even though I like to change things up where I live perhaps a little too often, I also like to do other things—like activities with some animals / unpredictability to them—over and over. Yin and Yang? Actually, I’ve no idea: it really is all a mystery. How about you? Do you have a tendency towards consistency, or mixing things up now and again? Do you like to travel to the same place year after year, or try new places? Or both! I’d love to hear from you about this.

Thanks as always for reading! In two weeks, I will be on the West Coast of the US, enjoying family and friends and hopefully some lovely weather too. (And of course eating authentic corn tortilla chips-one of the things I miss most here in the UK 🤗!)

Hope to find you here again soon.

xx Sabrina

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