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I have been feeling unsettled for a while now, long before the UK national lockdowns. In fact it was the lockdowns that gave me an insight into what I had possibility been looking for in the previous few years.
You see for the past eight years or so I’ve been searching for something, but looking for nothing. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to live in a calmer environment. The streets of London became quite, birds could be heard singing in the garden and the silence on the allotment allowed for the sound of bees to become deafening.
Living in a shared house with four others there is never a quiet moment. During lockdown most of the house were travelling around the world on holiday or away on business which meant there was only myself and two others living there. The quietness of the house highlighted as aspect of life that I had been unknowingly searching for – peace and calmness.
One day while being sat in my allotment shed I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a photograph taken in the forestry of my birth place in Wales. It was taken from one of the many mountain roads surrounding the valley of the Rhondda Fawr.
This single image helps form the mangle of thoughts that had been flying around my mind in recent years. Did I want to move from my current house? Did I want to stay in London? My friend Richard lives on the Worthing coastline so I concentrated my search for a possible new home between just outside South-East London down to the sea. I’ve even been to view a few properties in the Happy Valley area of Greater London. Quickly I’m seeing that financially this may not be the right direction to go searching. Dorset, Hasting, Scotland and West of Ireland have all made it to the list.
It’s never been in my mind to return back to South Wales. Maybe returning is seen as an act of failure and its this that has stopped me from including it on my list. Having researched and looking at these previously mentioned places on my list, each are quickly scratched off the list for a variety of reasons. Returning to Wales is starting to feel comfortable, like putting on an old pair of slippers. I know the people, the places, there wouldn’t be years spent getting to know areas and the people. I could slip back into the community where I was born and the mountains I grew up amongst. Sometimes we have to travel the world to realise that what we want is the place we left. This time though, we return with first hand knowledge of other places and people. So even if I had never left, I wouldn’t be the person I am today for all these experiences.
Suddenly Wales is feeling more and more attractive as I sit in the allotment shed staring at the image of my birthplace.