Nostalgia

A trip down memory lane is unsettling at the least which accounts for my emotions as I write this.

We needed a replacement fluorescent tube for our kitchen units and so we had our morning route march through the Meadows to our old hunting ground where the once local church has been converted into a showplace of all things light orientated - less of the ‘burning bush’ and more a blazing showroom.

Instead of returning the way we had come, His Lordship suggested a stroll through all the old familiar byeways_ the same ones I trod as a child and later as an adult until our move to the Dower House.

It was a bittersweet occasion. It was the kind of day that brought memories flooding back- the quiet streets filled with autumn leaves lying thick against the stone walls and in the gutters, the blue sky, the memory of my schooldays walking through those leaves to school and later those of the children kicking through them when out playing,but mostly I remembered the happy family life within the walls of the old castle, a house I Ioved and will always love.

We stopped to peer through the gate as we passed, knowing that the new owners would be out at work and would not notice our curiosity.
It felt as if we could just walk up the windy path that HL constructed, past the standing stone that we put in the garden and turn the key in the door and be home again.
But we know the inside is not as we knew it. The new owners have upgraded the back of the house and indeed invited us to see the renovations about 5 years ago.
We approved them but it wasn’t my house anymore, it looked diffferent on the inside, but not this morning from the garden gate in the autumn sunshine.