Heimatschmerz?

However much I pack, there seems to be the same amount left, however many boxes pile up and however much I throw away. Like one of those magic purses in fairy tales, only less useful, the house seems able to generate more rubbish from nowhere. It has always been like that in this house; you hoover the stairs and half an hour later, there are bits all over them. Maybe it's not the house; maybe it's us.

Or the cats, perhaps. Shrimpy just ran past me with a mouse in this mouth, uttering a low growl when I tried to chase him. A bit later he came back down without the mouse; who knows where it is now. He seems to know where to find an endless supply of mice; perhaps he is also bringing other stuff into the house.

At home in England, or not

Alexander said the other day that he would not miss England because (in sorrowful tones) "I have never really felt at home here, anyway." He is 12, so this is a bit odd, and possibly but I said I could understand that, as I have never really felt at home here either. When I am feeling pretentious, I put this down to not being English - which "technically" as the children say for almost everything, I am not. But it is more likely temperamental, or perhaps nobody feels particularly at home anywhere. Heard some artist on the radio the other day who had returned to his native Yorkshire as an old man and was on about how this was the only place he could really feel at home. I stood there with my tea towel wondering what he meant and trying to imagine feeling like that about anywhere.

The fact is that although I always cry at the "Edelweiss" bit of the Sound of Music, and anything like that (especially anything about the Nazis or Czecho, which makes me think of my father and mother's family being exiled), I don't feel remotely like that myself. I wonder if, if the Nazis took over Shoreham, I would start to feel very passionate about staying here? I am not sure. It is one thing missing the mountain snows and Edelweiss and quite another feeling a terrible longing for the M25 or Otford Homebase. Here, it is quite small, and crowded, and it is hard to feel an Wordsworthian surge when every time you step outside your door someone is trying to park their van in your space,. Indeed, it is as well Romantic poetry happened in the 19th c for it would not in my view have a chance of evolving in Sevenoaks 2007. People always say Brits are not very patriotic and maybe there isn't enough landscape left for that.

The fact is, as I have got older I don't feel attached to much, and perhaps that is just practice. After all, things let you down. I remember Jane telling me that after all her jewellery got nicked on Milan station, she never got that attached to stuff again and when Penny's house burned down with everything in it, she had no choice. You think you'll die without your photo albums, but you don't. Of course, the logical conclusion of this is being desensitised like a child soldier- no longer caring about anyone or anything because you can't know they won't desert you, which clearly is no good. But there is something to be said for a middle way: you don't want to lose the will to live because your Zoffany curtains went up in smoke, and some boyfriends were actually not that great when you look back on them.


Maybe I am deluding myself when I say I will not miss anything about life in Kent. It's not that it's that bad, it's just over, and is starting to seem a bit small and grey. It certainly doesn't stack up that well against the huge open spaces of the Sierra de los Filabres. So far my list of things I will miss is this long:

1) BBC radio

I'm not saying it isn't fun going to the Crown and having a drink and a banter, but you can do that anywhere. I'm not knocking it here, but you don't miss something just because you did it for a long time, particularly not if what you do afterwards is better. However, when I am 80 maybe I will come tottering back and fondly reminisce about where Tesco used to be. I was talking to Juana's father in May and he said he had been back to the mill where he grew up; it was a big expedition, although it is only in Albanchez which is a few villages away. The thing is, I didnt grow up anywhere really worth revisiting and while after a few beers with Ralph we can reminisce about Cinderella Rockefellers and the Bingo that used to be the Orchid Ballroom, the Red Deer Disco Pub and seeing the Boomtown Rats at the Greyhound, the fact is that Purley, which was once a bit like Sevenoaks, is now like Catford, or any nasty suburb, and Sevenoaks is not even like Sevenoaks any more. Still, I can see myself, very wrinkly and in black because I have been in Spain for so long, clutching my grandchildren and saying: "And here, here is where the shopping trolleys used to park up..."