13 April

The last couple of days have seen a convergence of East and West. Close friends of ours, who moved a few years ago to Cornwall, came to stay with their two children. I was excited about seeing them, given that they live a looong way from us and the opportunities to visit one another are rare, but I always get so caught up in preparations for visitors, so task-oriented, that I almost forget how nice it is when they actually arrive. Officially the Nicest People in the World, they are impecunious and irrepressibly cheerful, happy as proverbial sandboys in their seaside world.

J and I met at university, too many moons ago, and subsequently shared various grotty flats together. We talk about those days now and our speech is heavy with nostalgia, dripping with allusions to fun, to times of opportunity and lack of responsibility. In truth, it was more of a haze of red wine and tears, but we enjoy colluding in false memory syndrome. Since then, marriage, children and relocation for us both have limited the time we get to spend together, and have added lines to our faces and care to our hearts. It’s so nice to giggle and be irresponsible again, carelessly leaving the childcare to the husbands, the cooking as well in my case. The bigger children are of an age to make dens together, disappear from sight and supervision for a while, immediately picking up their casual acquaintance where they left off, ooh a year or so ago now, without the need for niceties. The little ones are a bit more suspicious, a bit guarded; Cinderella or Thunderbirds? Jammie Dodgers or chocolate fingers? A shared passion for Balamory and Smarties saved the day and they bonded, pressed up close, expressing their emotions through their bodies in true toddler style.

Both families moved out to the country at around the same time, yet our experiences are so different. We have fertile plains, they have windswept beaches. We get grass in our picnics, they get sand. We cycle and recycle, they sail and freecycle (well, we do too). We do cricket on the green, they surf the rollers. Our countryside is gentle and accessible, theirs wild and rocky. Our life is often north-easterly winds and mud, theirs south-westerly gales and salt. But we’re united in our love for our adopted lands, enthusing with all the zeal of the converted. United, too, in our fundamental quest to raise children who can tell a beech tree from an oak, who know that potatoes are dug from the ground, and who will grow up with some understanding of our rich pastoral heritage.

Perhaps the biggest difference is in attitude. Both our families have struggled, sometimes, with the pressures of life in a new environment, the need for a better work/life balance contrasting with the equally pressing need of keeping roofs over our eight heads. Yet they take worry and blow it out to sea, lost to the thundering waves, whereas our cares seem to ferment in this rich and heavy earth. There was a lesson there for us, and I hope we absorbed it.

They left late yesterday afternoon, and the children and I, all equally exhausted from late nights and constant chatter, settled down to my favourite double DVD offering; The Railway Children followed by Swallows and Amazons. Retro bliss. Now all I have to do is catch up with all the blogs.