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Eight years next to Paradise
Jan. 4th, 2021 05:54 pmAll the boxes are packed — barring the one which will hold our duvets and the last remaining crockery and water glasses — all the bookshelves are empty, and all the cupboards are bare. It's our final night in our little house under the ivy.
We've lived here for eight years. It was not the first place where we lived together: we lived for a year in a sharehouse with three of our friends. But it was the first place where we lived alone as a couple, it's where we lived when I finished my PhD, when we both fell into librarianship as a career, became UK citizens, Matthias completed his librarianship degree and I my teaching qualification, and where we lived when we got married. We've seen a lot of life in this house.
This past year, more than ever, I was profoundly happy to be living here. It's centrally located, it's got great shops around the corner (none of which closed during the pandemic and indeed a new one selling great bread, cheese and vegetables opened), and in general it was a nice place to be locked down and working with my husband across the other side of the dining room table. And, above all, it has so many green spaces just outside the door. I've talked a lot here about walking or running to Grantchester, which was great when I had the time, but not always possible in the middle of a working day. But for days when all we had time for was a quick stretch of the legs after lunch, we had Paradise.
This little nature reserve is literally just around the corner, and yet for seven years I had no idea of its existence. One morning, early in April, I wandered down a street I'd never been in, and there it was: ducks, swans, grazing sheep and all. During the summer we went there almost every single day.
It's been a bit too muddy in the winter to go there, but as it was our last day in the area, we trudged through the mud to see it one last time as residents. It started off cloudy, but as we rounded the final corner, the sun came out. The whole place is flooded — what was a field of sheep in the summer is now a lake filled with confused swans and seagulls. We drank in the earth, and all that water.
We would have loved to stay living in this part of the world, but sadly it is the most expensive part of Cambridge, and buying here would have been impossible. (For comparison, one of the other houses in the complex recently sold for twice the cost of what we paid for our new house.) And so, tomorrow, away we go, for new walls, new trees, and new adventures.
We've lived here for eight years. It was not the first place where we lived together: we lived for a year in a sharehouse with three of our friends. But it was the first place where we lived alone as a couple, it's where we lived when I finished my PhD, when we both fell into librarianship as a career, became UK citizens, Matthias completed his librarianship degree and I my teaching qualification, and where we lived when we got married. We've seen a lot of life in this house.
This past year, more than ever, I was profoundly happy to be living here. It's centrally located, it's got great shops around the corner (none of which closed during the pandemic and indeed a new one selling great bread, cheese and vegetables opened), and in general it was a nice place to be locked down and working with my husband across the other side of the dining room table. And, above all, it has so many green spaces just outside the door. I've talked a lot here about walking or running to Grantchester, which was great when I had the time, but not always possible in the middle of a working day. But for days when all we had time for was a quick stretch of the legs after lunch, we had Paradise.
This little nature reserve is literally just around the corner, and yet for seven years I had no idea of its existence. One morning, early in April, I wandered down a street I'd never been in, and there it was: ducks, swans, grazing sheep and all. During the summer we went there almost every single day.
It's been a bit too muddy in the winter to go there, but as it was our last day in the area, we trudged through the mud to see it one last time as residents. It started off cloudy, but as we rounded the final corner, the sun came out. The whole place is flooded — what was a field of sheep in the summer is now a lake filled with confused swans and seagulls. We drank in the earth, and all that water.
We would have loved to stay living in this part of the world, but sadly it is the most expensive part of Cambridge, and buying here would have been impossible. (For comparison, one of the other houses in the complex recently sold for twice the cost of what we paid for our new house.) And so, tomorrow, away we go, for new walls, new trees, and new adventures.