Inspiration

It was a beautiful weekend in Dorset. It feels like a little while since I’ve been at the Old Parsonage, and towards the end of last week we were getting busier and busier in the office. So,very early on Friday morning, when I was finally able quietly to slip out of London and escape on the second morning train, and head west, I could feel life getting calmer by the minute.

The valley, yesterday, was extraordinary still. Nothing moved. The morning air was bitterly cold, but bright sunshine soon warmed the house, and garden, and I went for a walk down to the lake at the bottom of the garden, and I am not sure I have seen such a beautiful scene in a while. Snowdrops are coming. Spring is around the corner in Dorset.

Friday was a happy day. After a few meetings in Dorchester, I got home, met Liz and Midori in the garden, and discussed plans for 2012. In the afternoon my piano was delivered. I don’t think, thinking back, that I’ve mentioned my, um, piano moment on this blog. Over Christmas and New Year, when I suppose I was in the house for the longest time I’ve spent there in one go, I slowly realised that what I was quietly missing in my life was a piano. In pondering this, I did a little bit of internet research and after a little while found the brilliant website of a distinguished piano manufacturers and dealers, Robert Morley of Lewisham. Early in the New Year, my friend Will and I trekked down to Lewisham to try out a 19th century Hagspiel that I had spied.  Really, really, I can’t play; I never once in my life learned to read music, and this is something I’m going to try and put right. Well, maybe. But William can, beautifully. So we thought about it, and I bonded with that piano, and I took advantage of Mr. Morley’s fantastically generous terms; and on Friday, at last, the piano was delivered. I think it feels quite at home already. I’ve been playing it all weekend long. I would have called this post something along the lines of ‘Peaceful Valley’ but I am not sure this can be quite true anymore.