What's In A Name?

With the news filled with reports about all the new homes being built around the country, so many often square and soulless buildings, I was delighted when my husband and I recently spent a lovely day in an enchanting historic town that we have not visited for many years. Rye in Sussex is filled with ancient buildings, all so beautifully maintained and we love wandering about the cobblestone streets, our favourite is the historic Mermaid Street.with buildings from the 15th – 17th Century. We walked from the rear of timber framed Mermaid Inn through Mermaid Passage, a little cobbled passage that runs uphill from The Mint, through the Mermaid Inn's yard and archway, into Mermaid Street. I revelled in viewing wonderfully named ‘old friends’ such as 'The House Opposite', just across from The Mermaid Inn and others with equally unusual names such as 'The house with two doors' and 'The house with the seat'. Most of these timber-framed buildings are either Tudor or Medieval in origin and filled with a sense of history and belonging.

House names have always intrigued me, but Alan finds great dismay in those that are so often seen ~ where I am prone to wonder about the lives, past and present of those who live there now and others who were resident in the past, he visibly cringes at those that carry names such as ‘dun roamin’ and ‘sea view’ (why ARE these cottages so often miles from the sea!). He finds the homes with their unique names that grace Mermaid Street a great relief and does not offer any negative comments which is always pleasing (oh, dear, sounds like a Victor Meldrew or ‘Grumpy Old Man’ reference and although I admit that as a young man he was often teased about sounding like Victor from ‘One Foot In The Grave’ he has definitely mellowed with age. Morgan and I like to think it is our charming influence and unwillingness, over time to rise to the bait.

In a way, my curiosity about houses and those to whom they are known as home (oh dear, is ‘nosy’ a more apt word? I hope not!) is similar to the reaction I have when I am at an airport or train station. I am always filled with interest as I watch those ready to depart and wonder to myself (some things are definitely best left unsaid) about the reason for their journey and hoping they are off for some wonderfully romantic adventure. Clearly you can see that we are a case of ‘opposites attract’ but thankfully it has worked quite well over our many years together – he has mellowed and I no longer go through life will rose-coloured glasses ~ okay, at least SOME of the time they are removed.

After twenty-eight years of travel and living between England and America, we have spent more time than most in airport terminals (our daughter’s first passport has a photograph of her at the age of 10 weeks – yes, sentimental as I am and have already described, I save all of our expired passports and with dual citizenship I admit that does add up to quite a few). I never tire of the opportunity to wonder about the other travellers I encounter and can sit happily for hours watching individuals and the world pass by before me. However, being a product of two very different parents and although definitely her own unique person, our daughter is like her father in many ways. As a result, to continue to enjoy family travel when we were all still journeying around the world together, I had to become quite clever in finding ways to ensure that my flights were still the same wonderful experiences I had always found them to be. My daughter and her father delight in making discreet comments about the other passengers to pass the time (definitely not romantic wonderings about their journeys); especially on the very long flights we had during our years of living between California and England. In the end to enable myself to continue my pleasure in flying during family trips, I would always reserve two seats together for them and a separate one for myself just a couple of rows ahead to avoid suspicion. It was several years before I was caught and they realized that my excuse about my inability to find three seats together was unfounded (in the end it was an almost entirely empty flight that left my totally defenceless!). Oh well, it never hurts to be forced to use one’s imagination to come up with new ideas . . .

Sentiment and Memories

“Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us." ~ Oscar Wilde

My members and my website, Countryside Connection, are so much more than simply ‘my business’ they are a driving passion that I find very difficult to pull myself away from. If I am not corresponding and promoting members and their unique offerings, seeking new networking connections for them or working on the latest issue of our newsletter, there seems to be a hundred other things demanding attention at that very moment (the demands are only within the recesses of my own mind, as my wonderful members are always so supportive and send the most thoughtful email messages that, of course, I find impossible to delay responding to them or telephoning to say thank you and so on . . . My Inbox would astound most of you but I cannot part with any but the most mundane, or the dreaded Spam that manages to bypass my controls as they are filled with memories and bring joy when re-read. 

I have been wanting to add to my new blog for weeks and always wonder aloud late each night at where the time has gone ~ the answer frequently comes from my wonderfully supportive husband and it is always the same ~ you have not left your office unless it was unavoidable (meaning impossible to ignore) and to be fair, he is right. In the icy chill of wintertime it is even easier as I have the excuse of wanting to stay snuggled against my hot water bottle which rests against the small of my back (my poor teddy bear bottle, a present from same irreplaceable husband of 28 years, has a face that is threadbare below his lovely eyes and increasingly I notice yet another missing bit of fur on his patchy, worn body, but like a child with a beloved cuddly toy from childhood, I cannot bear-no pun intended-the thought of another one as he is truly irreplaceable and filled with memories and comfort) My daughter understands this perfectly as we share our passion for beloved items with their anthropomorphic qualities so filled with cherished memories ~ it is one of the reasons Moving Companies LOVE us so much as I feel certain the owners of each company have enjoyed a glorious holiday following yet another of our expensive international moves. 

In the Bookshop Category on my website, I describe our family passion for books, especially old ones and the inscriptions from those who have possessed them in the past, and our inability to part with them. Oh, if books were the only items we were sentimental about . . . memories of those I love who are no longer physically with me yet always in my heart and my thoughts are bound up in so many items that I cannot part with, ranging from large pieces of inherited furniture to bits of old lace, a collection of buttons and treasures collected from sandy beaches I have explored. I have saved almost every item my daughter has brought home from school or created at home since she first started at nursery; she and my husband have corresponded whenever they have been apart, whether he was working away from  home at the time, or when she was at school, then university and now living and working a few hours from home. They have never resorted to emails, as she and I now exchange, and she recently revealed to his great astonishment, the boxes in which she has kept every letter he has ever written and all of the enclosures, from cartoons and drawings he created for her to articles and comics he searches through newspapers and magazines to include for her enjoyment each week. We are a sentimental threesome, each in our own individual way and I would not change that or either of them for anything in the world.        

“Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories” ~ from the movie An Affair to Remember.  This is one of my favourite films of all times and never fails to require a box of tissues or a large handkerchief close at hand. I have a very sad worn tape and do not know what I will do if our old VCR ever dies and I cannot find this film on DVD, once we finally join the modern age and buy a DVD machine that is! I wish that I could say this reaction was unusual for me, but one of my brothers commented at an early age that I was the only person he knew who cried at commercials. As you can see, my sentimentality really has no bounds.