Home Sweet Home

I don't think I'm alone in having lived in several different places across the country and I've found that those places have suited a certain time in my life. Now, whether I changed to the place I was l living in, or that place was right for the stage in my life I'm not sure. 

For the last seven years I have lived in a village to the north of Norwich which is a long way from where I grew up in the Midlands. Whereas here, this is my typical view

back in Solihull where I came from you could drive the ten miles into town (Birmingham) without spotting a single field, without there being a break in housing and built up areas. 

I left Solihull to go to uni in Leeds and ended up staying there for eight years. I loved living in Leeds, I knew from the moment I stepped off the train to visit the university at eighteen, that it was the place I wanted to be and I will always have very fond memories of living there. 

However, I returned there about five years ago and found that I couldn't really imagine living there any more. It had been a place for my student times, for my clubbing days, not a place for where I am in my life now. 
 I moved from Leeds to Ashford in Kent and although I was there for five years, it always felt like a transitionary place to live. I was there for the job and that was pretty much it. 

Moving up here, buying a house in a little village where the pace of life was so much slower, I felt like I was in holiday for quite a long while. I thought I might feel isolated, not knowing virtually anyone and being stuck in the middle of nowhere compared to where I had been before, but now I can't imagine living anywhere else. The village school is within walking distance, you see someone you know every time you go out, all of the girls friends live near by and I have made close friends too. It's a place that suits our family life. 

And the village library is in the phone box. Quiet please!