4 March

“Land of the silver birch, home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose wanders at will.”

No, clearly not Suffolk, but the opening lines of a song that my children just can’t stop singing at the moment. I don’t know what it is about a Native American lament for Canada that makes tears prick my eyes each time I hear their soaring yet slightly off-key voices. It is surely to do with the continual yearning for home that we all carry around inside; we’re all still banging on the locked doors of Eden, after all. I used to suffer from the most dreadful homesickness as a child; it blighted sleepovers and school trips and sometimes I feel as though it has never quite left me. We went to visit friends on London on Saturday and have just returned now, on Sunday evening. I was longing to go – weekends when it rains relentlessly make me especially keen to hit the bright lights of the city, and I was dying to see my friends. We had a lovely time, with far too much late night drinking and talking, yet increasingly I feel the pull of home wherever I am. It’s a bit like the umbilical cord that still binds us to our children, or the let-down reflex that breastfeeding mothers feel whenever they think about their babies. I never thought that I would feel like an outsider in a city where I’d lived for so long, yet I did feel disconnected . Maybe it’s because my life has certainly become narrower – village, school and shop pretty much covers it these days – yet I don’t feel less because of it. I don’t believe my mind has narrowed. For all that I once lived the jaunty, cosmopolitan existence, in truth I mainly mixed with other people like myself. Similar jobs, similar backgrounds, similar views, similar lifestyles. Now, I am part of a community that is made up of people of different generations, different backgrounds, different opinions. Some city friends have asked me how I can cope with the fact that the countryside is so insular, and of course it’s true that there is less of an ethnic mix of backgrounds and languages than in an inner city. It is part of my job as a parent to open the eyes of my children to different worlds. But scratch the surface of this apparent monoculture and the differences yawn as wide as a chasm. I love the way that a community, like the landscape itself, slowly opens itself up to you, if you look hard enough.

Back to our weekend; I may be feeling increasingly displaced if I venture far from home, but children, of course, demonstrate that total adaptability to their surroundings that is the preserve of the very young. They apply the same energy and enthusiasm to walking down busy London streets as they do to kicking leaves in the woods. My son particularly loves seeing all the tall buildings, so we always do the rituals of seeing Big Ben, and pointing out Tower Bridge and Canary Wharf, and we often take a trip on the London Eye. They both love to play with my friends’ children and giggle the night away, all crowded in together. James spooked me slightly by saying that he was jealous of my friends’ children for living in London. My antennae always attuned to any hint of deprivation that my children feel, and worried that they might be missing out on the culture and fun of the big city, I anxiously asked him why he felt like that. “Just imagine, Mummy, being able to see the Thames Barrier whenever you want”, he explained. ???????! Must be a boy thing (and no, we didn’t take him to see it).

I don’t know if anyone else reads Edward Lear, but driving back home, leaving a comfortable urban world, I felt like the Yonghi Bonghi Bo, returning to:”Two old chairs and half a candle
One old jug without a handle”.

As we leave the busy motorway behind and head east, the world empties. Fewer cars, fewer towns, less noise, just immense skies and vast tracts of farmland. It’s the silence you really notice. Like animals who sense when home is near, we all grow calmer.

“Blue lake and rocky shore, I will return once more” sing my children, as they get to the end of their favourite song. We have no blue lake and rocky shore to welcome us, no crags nor forests. But I like to think that I can hear a welcome in the hoot of our familiar owl, and in the quiet utterance of the leaves.