My Perfect Home

I am often asked what would my perfect home be?  Before I was married I always wanted to live in a thatched cottage like the one in the photograph. I was going to have a cottage garden at the back with beautiful colours and scents and I intended to grow vegetables around the sides. My cottage would have been totally pine-filled, with Laura Ashley curtains and Eternal Beau crockery. There was going to be a beehive at the bottom of the garden. I also hoped to have a running stream behind my garden to be sure of fairies! It was going to be in a beautiful country village where the church bells woke me up each morning and the summer sun smiled through my bedroom window each day. I was going to teach in the local school and carry my shopping home from the village shop in my little wicker basket. I got as far as buying the wicker shopping basket but life and being the sensible young lady I was raised to be stopped me from buying the cottage and living the dream.

During the years of The Vicar of Dibley my husband used to look at me worriedly and ask "This is a comedy but the thing is you would just love to live there wouldn't you?" The answer I'm afraid was a definite YES! Even now if someone offered me a chance to move to Dibley I would take it with both hands!

It is nice living close to the towns and all that goes with it for the children and I would not move now because they would not like to leave, they're both settled in their schools and with friends and they like all that goes with city dwelling. But I just love long country walks and I'm happy baking and gardening. My daughter often looks at  the country villages we visit and says "It's nice Mum, and I know you'd love to live here, but there's nothing to do!" Why do people always have to be 'doing'? Why can't they just be?

Sometimes too many people and a world moving too fast make me say "I want to move to a lighthouse!" Really I just want my cottage, my books, my garden and to bake! When I say lighthouse - read cottage!

Alas, it is just a pipe dream. That cottage is far too small for our lively children and the garden would be too packed with whatever flowers I can find to leave room for them to play football or pitch tents. And it is far too remote for them to visit the cinema, supermarket or make a quick trip to town. I would never want them to be unhappy so we shall stay where they can do all the exciting things they like.

 But one day, when they are grown and busy leading their exciting lives and I am a little old lady, maybe I will find my tiny little thatched cottage and I can start planting that cottage garden, baking my bread and reading all the books I have stockpiled, in the last rays of the summer sun. Who knows I may even write my own novel. They say everyone has one in them. I am afraid it will be a love story because I have always liked happy endings!

I Do Believe In Fairies

I had a magical childhood, full of fairies, Father Christmas and the sandman who came every night to fill my eyes with sleep so that I would drift off to a mystical dreamland full of princesses, knights and wondrous castles in the clouds. Even now on a lovely summer day with skies full of cotton wool clouds I still find myself hoping that if I dived into them I would wake up in a magical kingdom.

Where did all these dreams come from? Well I had two of the most amazing parents ever. For five summers when I was small they took me to the Isle of Man for holidays. They tiptoed me round glens so that I didn't wake those fairies, my father used to get down on his hands and knees with me to look under the toadstools to see if we could see them sleeping, my mother would sit by the streams with me and listen to hear the sound of fairy wings fluttering by and we often did hear them. We had to say good morning to the men in green each morning or they would not have been happy! In the bottom corner of the garden my parents grew herbs and that was where the fairies lived in our garden. I could run all around the garden but I always tiptoed by their elfin grotto.

As I grew up and became more sensible I began to lose some of that magic and wonder. After all people laugh if you believe in the impossible. Well, I thought I had lost it. Then when our daughter was nearly one, my husband and I took her to the Isle of Man to see the places I went to as a child. I was disappointed at first because the magic didn't seem to be there and the weather wasn't too good either. Then one evening I said to my husband "I know why the weather is so awful, we haven't been leaving gifts for the fairies." He gave me his usual look of  'The woman's a complete idiot but I love her so I'll go with it!' and we left a drink and biscuits for the fairies. The next day we woke to glorious sunshine and had a lovely day exploring. We left gifts for the fairies every night after that and the next eleven days before our return were blessed with blue skies and sunshine and a little of that magic returned.

Both our children grew up being told to listen for fairies flying by and watching for their footsteps dancing in puddles on rainy days. My daughter loved this and looked and listened with so much glee. Sadly our son is affected by the cynical rationality of the modern day and believes nothing he hasn't seen with his own eyes. At six he told me to stop talking about Santa because 'it's not really possible Mum'. I cried. When our daughter was nine I was still leaving bits of Santa's beard on the sherry glass on Christmas Eve. Well okay, I still lie awake on Christmas Eve with one ear listening just in case!

My husband took me to Haworth for a short break in February and made a short detour to take me to Cottingley - he knows me so well. Now I know this was a major hoax. I really am not a complete idiot. But there is still part of me that hopes to wander down by the stream and catch them flying about or maybe hear their wings beating as they flutter by.

Last month my son made me cry - he said "I don't believe in fairies" and I realised that I wasn't upset because he was being his usual rational self but because J M Barrie wrote that every time someone said that, a fairy died and there are so few of them left.

So please tread carefully when passing toadstool circles, never disturb the quiet corners of your garden, leave a treat if you visit the Isle of Man and  if you are a non-believer don't ever say those words out loud. Because I'm afraid

I really do believe in fairies!