Residential Respite

It’s been a month since our move and, diminutive living quarters aside, we like where we live.

The town center was a convenient and agreeable place to reside, but Horsham is a growing town and, lately, it had become too rowdy for the likes of us. Here, I don’t have to jostle my way through crowds to get to the corner store. It’s peaceful, and secluded and you hardly see anyone, and the people you do see often say, “Good morning,” which still startles me a little. Instead of the bustling main street, the lanes are tree-lined and empty.

Where we live now

Where we used to live

And it is so nice to be able to walk out of my front door and not have to go down 68 steps to reach the pavement. I have not lived in a ground floor flat since 1993 and, although I did like being on top of the world, there is a lot to be said for street level.

Even on the ground floor, this flat has a balcony, so I get to sit, have a pipe and enjoy the view. Granted, the view is of the building where they keep the rubbish bins, but it’s a tidy little brick structure that reminds me of a pill-box, and at the very least it’s better looking than the rubbish area at Pelham Court, where we originally lived.

My current view

View of the rubbish area at Pelham Court

And it’s quiet. At night, there are no revelers with their 110-decibel conversations at two in the morning, no delivery vans banging and clanging at four, no bin lorries bashing and revving their engines at five and no street sweepers whirring and churning at six. For the first time in nearly three years we are able to get a full night’s sleep.

The nights here are dark, and the only sound is the distant hum of the highway (this is the south-east of Britain, after all; you are never very far from a main road). In the mornings we hear only the twitter of birds, and I’m pretty sure a pellet rifle will take care of that.

It is also, however, very, very white. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no racist; I’ve got nothing against white people (though I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one), but the town center was populated with people from the sub-continent, China, Indonesia, Africa and Eastern Europe who, together, wove an exotic human tapestry, and I find I miss the diversity.

Fortunately, the town center is just a15 minute walk away, so when I feel the need for multi-culturalism, I can find it fairly quickly.

But, alas, the place where I spend the bulk of my time—my office—is much smaller than my previous office and I find it still pinches around the edges. With so many other advantages, however, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. In time.

Old office

New office