On the edge of the Cotswolds

It was lovely to catch up with rellies not hugged for a long time and, of course, my cousin, Ali, who somehow always manages to look younger each time I see her. I stayed with Ali and her lovely Ray, and Daisy too, along with the three doggies, so walks in the English countryside were a given.

Not much has changed – those huge skies are still there that my grandfather used to paint, those wide views over gently rolling fields, some still brown, others green and some, sadly, bright yellow with rapeseed, a blight on the usual pastel shades. Copses of woods bright with bird song, green spring leaves on every tree and carpets of bluebells under. Public bridle paths everywhere and not a barbed-wire fence in sight.

We visited my mum’s sister, my Auntie Nan, in her pretty stone cottage and garden surrounded, I’m sure, by all the same kinds of things my mum would have had in her home had she lived, as she should have, to a sensible old age.

My brother, Jonathan, drove up from London (and took me back there afterwards) to do a ‘nostalgia’ tour of parts of our past. We shared some old stories and some new. My maternal grandparents were both doctors and delivered me at their home, a house called Nicholas Corner in the ochre-coloured Cotswold stone village of Burdrop. My grandfather ran his practice in the surgery next door. Although I have had the house pointed out to me several times in the past, I had never before been inside, so I plucked up the courage to knock on the door and introduce myself. The connections having been made, not only were we invited in, but got a tour of the house and a chance to stand in the actual bedroom I was born in.

Jonathan and I reflected on why these kinds of connections are so important to us: 
 
 

perhaps not only because we lost our mother, and in fact both our parents, so young, but also because we grew up half way around the world from our birthplace. I am, vehemently, and always will be, a Kiwi, but part of my heart also will always be amongst those little villages of Oxfordshire.