Wordsmith
Kev Reynolds would like to have his cake and eat it …
There was an old man in the village where I grew up who never travelled far . When in his eighties he confessed that he ’ d only been to London once and didn ’ t think much of it . ‘ So I never bothered to go back ,’ he said .
His home was a thirty-�ive minute train ride from the heart of the city .
I used to think that was a bit short-sighted , and scorned his lack of appetite for anything unfamiliar , and when I grew up to �ill my adult life with travels to far distant places , it ’ s a view I clung to .
But wait a minute , perhaps the old boy ’ s attitude was not so far off the mark after all . I mean , how much travel is suf�icient to satisfy one man ’ s greed ? At what stage do you wake up and realise you ’ ll never live long enough to tick everything off your bucket list , and when do you accept the truth that the mysterious
Without an abiding love of home my restless soul would have been impossible to live with
land of grass that ’ s greener than your own will always remain beyond the horizon ?
Despite having a tatty , dog-eared passport fat with visas , I ’ ve always needed roots ; a base , somewhere to call home . Somewhere to return to where I could brush the dust from my boots , drink fresh water straight from the tap , sit on a toilet , and turn a light on with the �lick of a switch . I wanted somewhere to store my books and the music I couldn ’ t live without . And above all I needed a home to share with my wife ; somewhere to raise a family who I could ease into a life of adventure too . Yes , I ’ ve always wanted to have my cake and eat it . Thanks to serendipity I ’ ve been able to taste that cake , and it was delicious .
For more than �ifty years my wife and I had such a base in a Kentish village we discovered by chance . It had everything we needed , except mountains . Yet despite the high and wild places being beyond our physical horizon , we could usually be among them within twenty-four hours or so . If the journey to get there took a day or two longer , that journey became an important part of the adventure , and was something to savour .
Without an abiding love of home my restless soul would have been impossible to live with . But I found that going home was ( and is ) always as much to look forward to as going away . The �inal stretch of my return from one UK airport or another invariably brought me over the wooded greensand hills that serve as a backdrop to reveal a three-county view linked by the Weald spread out below . No matter where I ’ d come from , or how long I ’ d been away , my heart would always jump into my throat .
Everything I could see in that view was familiar , and everything said ‘ welcome home ’.
Throughout the �ifty-odd years we lived in that village I walked every footpath for miles around . My wife and I got to know every hamlet , every village , every farm , stream , pond and strip of woodland . Our children too , they lived in the man with the world ’ s best job a wonderland with roots , growing up to question : ‘ what ’ s this or where ’ s that ?’ and their questions taught us more than we thought we knew . When knee-high to a grasshopper they educated us by the wisdom of each enquiry .
But the girls grew up and moved away ( not far , thank goodness ), and we became grandparents . And still the urge to travel burned within me . You see , I just loved being somewhere different , and was lucky enough to have publishers with faith in my ability to write something about where I ’ d been that we could turn into a book , or perhaps a brochure or three , and / or a series of magazine features . Lucky ? I ’ ll say . Then we closed the door on all that we knew and moved home . I ’ ll spare you the details . The truth is , our roots were eased from fertile ground and transplanted two miles away at the foot of the hill . Two miles ? It seemed as though we were emigrating to a distant land . It was winter . The trees were bare , birds shivered and stayed silent until long after the �irst sun rinsed a new day . I paced empty rooms that echoed , and the night after moving in I needed to get outside for fresh air , away from packing cases waiting to be unpacked ; away from decisions I should have made years ago – what to do with half a century of clutter ? So I pulled on my boots and went outside , leaving decisionmaking for my wife . She ’ s good at that .
It was then that I considered renaming our new abode Misty Hollow . From what I imagined had been romantic heights up the hill , we ’ d slipped down to a frost pocket into which I was now drawn . But as I wandered down the farm lane just round the corner I felt the magic of the place . It was mysterious with skeins of mist hovering a few feet above the meadows either side of me ; individual oak trees were decapitated by that mist , and a ghostly white moon shimmered overhead .
The lane
… as I wandered down the farm lane just round the corner I felt the magic of the place brought me to a farm and a handful of converted barns and outbuildings , and from there , beyond a �ive-bar gate I gazed north to the place we ’ d deserted . A few lights told of houses I knew intimately ; they , and the hill to which they clung , were �loating on a raft of November mist .
Between here and there I knew every landscape feature and reckoned I could �ind my way back ‘ home ’ even were I blind . But though everything was familiar , it was now seen from an unfamiliar perspective - a mirage , perhaps ? Or a mirror-image ? The world I thought I knew until now needed unravelling to reveal its truths .
That ’ s when I came to realise that the surprise of the familiar can be as exciting as the seven wonders of the world .
Perhaps the old boy in the village where I grew up was an adventurer after all . outdoor focus / autumn 2021 11