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!