Friday October 24, 2008
To Ikea in Cardiff today, on a day that started out dull and dreary but ended sunny and warm. The trip is some 41 miles though it seems longer–driving on motorways in Britain gets duller and duller as the volume of traffic increases.
For whatever reason I felt sour and jaded. No, the reason is obvious, I’m tired to the bone and any journey is a battle just now, with my joints and sinews seemingly determined to beat me down. I’m certain it’s no more than tiredness and the after-effects of the stress of moving house so I’m not too worried about it all.
The coming weekend will give me a chance to recharge. I have to shop tomorrow for the two days and, with Graham needing to go to a big DIY store, the chance presents itself to shop in Morrison’s, Neath, for the first time. I’m having a bit of an internal battle on supermarket choice just now. I hate to say it, and I really never expected it, but I miss Sainsbury’s. Neither Tesco’s satisfy me, not even the giant one at Llansamlett; it’s not just about quantity, quality is important, too. The nearest Sainsbury’s is in Swansea, some nine miles away. It may be that I shall try the journey before deciding finally which shop will get my custom.
Gosh but I was glad to get home, though. Sure, a trip to IKEA is always fun, and I love the breakfast, but it was so good to pull up on our driveway, take a deep lungful of good sweet air, and feel that I am home at last. The end of the road, just two houses away from our driveway, joins onto a good-sized piece of wild woodland, with oak, birch and ash.
One giant oak is known to the local kids as the Magic Faraway Tree and, looking at it, I can see why. It has a magnificent spread and even now, in the early autumn, its leaves make a dark, mysterious world I’d love to enter just so soon as my pesky legs will take me. Closer to me, though, there is a lovely stand of silver birch, apparently self-seeded from a giant parent that was lost in a great storm some years back. Beautiful, standing tall, a filmy cover of leaves against a sunny sky. Hard to think of a better sight than this to straighten a bent back. Not even the lamp-post spoils the picture for me, nor the magic of the little wood. After all, even the dark forest in Narnia had its lamp-post.
Silver birches
