Fires Were Started

We just stayed here.

That’s a real cottage in a real (remote) part of West Wales. I tell you that not to gloat over a nice time, but because it’s simply a total excitement that a place like that exists and hasn’t been destroyed by the march of glass and boring crotch-thrusting architecture.

All made of old branches and twigs, with a big fire, a secret loft bed, birds going wild, sheep staring, dirty bath, bobbly yellow walls made of ancient Earth, it’s a place with a personality. Just like being an owl. Owls have it good - everywhere they live is like that.

It was fun reading the guest book, with its competition to be the most bourgeois possible - how many kids did you conceive there? What did your food at the faraway gastropub cost? Just how friendly were you with the publican nearby? How closely did you align yourself with the local dolphins? Spectacular and beautiful - and I really mean this - not just as a place to stay, but also in the way the guest bookers feel like they need to justify their fun, and have instant self-analysis.

And guilt too. Everyone feels ashamed about their normal lives. And so did I. I’ve never had that before. I always feel guilty, but about specific things, not all of me. But you know, it is a totally different attitude when you live slower and you take heed from the limitations weather imposes on you and the wanders of field creatures, and I love that. London gives you everything all the time and it means you’re always occupied but always so bored every second, so distracted, restless.

So what to do?….be a rabbit or a dog probably. I had a great dream last night I was a rabbit bombing Tesco - I was so small, no-one suspected me.

Final thought - why did everyone in the book apart from us drive? Don’t you want to abandon all of your control? Isn’t that what fairytale cottages are for? They’re not for driving or for killing machines.