This World, This Life

I spoke to my sister the other day.  She is getting on in years - passed 80 last year, without appearing to be speeding - but still very active.  She lives alone now, a widow, in a small bungalow near the north Norfolk coast that has a big garden, landscaped lawns and flower beds at the front and deliberately "wilded" at the back and sides, with a fish pond, high hedgerows bordering the fields beyond, patches of meadow grass and wild plants everywhere.  It's a lovely idyllic place that I visit as often as I can, with benches scattered here and there in shady spots, to sit and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air in the summer months, sipping a cold beer or a glass of wine, and watch the multitude of wild birds swooping in and out of the hedgerows and feeders that are rigged on posts beside the washing line.  She and her late husband were avid twitchers, driving miles throughout the year to different nature reserves to enjoy the wildlife, and her binoculars are always at ...

  So it's a little under four months since I posted, at the end of September, that I was suffering from Depression.  Not a bad case, to be sure, no suicidal thoughts or anything of that nature - and thank God for that! - but bad enough to be affecting my day-to-day life.  I said in the post that I intended to share my journey through this problem, in the hope that my experiences might help others going through the same thing. We're into a New Year, I hope a much better year for all of us, so it's about time I kept my word and continued the story.   ----------------------------------------------------------------- In truth, not a huge amount has changed.  It's still there, and I know it will bite sometimes, usually when least expected.  I can be as right as rain for hours, or sometimes days, at a time, feeling full of the joys of spring (even in the depths of this cold Polish winter), making plans, feeling optimistic......feeling - normal .  Then, ...

  I read an interesting article on the BBC News website the other day, about the growing popularity of "tiny homes", and how they fitted in nicely with our eco-awareness in these climate changing years.  Like most such movements, it seems to have originated in the US and spread across the pond to us in Europe (and elsewhere). Tiny homes are essentially little houses, sometimes a single storey with one room serving as your total living space, and others a bit bigger, with an upper floor, sometimes not much more than a balcony, to hold your bed. The biggest have even gone as far as to have two upstairs bedrooms - an example wasn't shown, so I have a problem envisaging that one.  They come in a variety of styles: some like old gypsy caravans, some like glorified garden sheds, some looking like proper cottages complete with gabled roofs and decking surrounds, and some modernist glass cubes.  The common factor is they are all, as the name suggests, bloody small: perhaps 1...