Dear Lodge Farm,

You and I have been through a lot together. When I came here you were three hundred years old and I was twenty-five. Or maybe, in the way of multiple incarnations, we were both ancient in brick and flesh skins. You were tumble down and damp, cramped with linoleum and carpet, avocado green bathrooms and alarms, wisteria tore at your hair. An alleyway of cobbles and moss ran along your back, stones shouldered the hill from crushing you and all your rooms seemed underwater, under earth, dark and musty with the weight of trees and roots. There were broken down buildings gathered around you like old tired friends locked in ivy, beams that half fell to darkness where we imagined crying; when I first came here a milkmaid used to walk the grass by the wall to the L-shaped barn and a mother and baby haunted an upstairs bedroom. Slipped tiles and broken guttering, water rising beneath quick fix slabs of concrete, a fitted kitchen that fitted no one. Do you remember?

We arrived and flung wide windows. We scrubbed the underlay from wooden floors. We ripped those avocado green bathrooms out and built plinths and painted the ceilings sky blue with clouds scudding. We went in with gloved hands, bandannas on our faces, and pulled at the ivy and hauled at the beams falling. We imagined we released trapped souls. We lit candles and chanted and brought in the light. I remember on nights here, you creaking with multiple lives, saying, let’s live together peacefully, okay? and we did. The milkmaid disappeared. The crying baby stopped. The mother, dead in childbirth, vanished.

That was our beginning, the commune, the first marriage, the pagans in the wood. Then came Australia, a return with a bird of paradise, a second marriage, children and divorce and a move to the L-shaped barn so that you could be ripped out again, the entire first way of being forgotten in builders and new floors and literally hauling the hill away from your back so that you could role your shoulders, hold your head up and breathe. No more damp. A garden terraced with steps in odd places to allow me to walk in circles when I worked. A studio entirely redesigned and shifted on its axis. A bedroom erased of two men. We, my children and I, reentered your papered hallway, your bright and easy kitchen where doors had become windows, and windows had become doors and we set up a new childhood there.

Train tracks ran from school room to scullery. A library considered itself one of the finest. Intelligent storage packed away whole cities of lego and brought it out again to pierce at bare feet and give us memories of life lived on the floor building star ships. An attic that used to cramp itself into knots to fit the water tank became a thrill to say to guests, you’re up here as a creak up ancient steps revealed two more bedrooms and a bathroom, a view that made them sigh. You grew, you settled, occasionally a tile slipped or a pipe burst but we were here, I was here, to catch you. Your aging seemed to reverse. You blossomed into a youth you hadn’t seen before and appeared to double in size. We were happy. The children grew.

There were ponies in the garden and apples on the trees. Chickens tried and failed to avoid foxes. Potatoes pushed up through soil and blackberries became crumble in our hands. By your AGA lay children and animals, birthdays brought cakes from the oven and Christmas brought the box of decorations out from your musty hallway cupboard. I fell in love here again.

But as David Shrigley says, all things must end and you and I know the wheel has turned. In these thirty years from when you were three hundred and I was twenty-five you’ve reincarnated three times to fit my changing life. You’ve recovered healthy lungs and a strong and beating heart. You’ve solidified your walls and mended broken guttering, your wisteria no longer tears at your hair but drapes instead in tendrils violet and gleaming. You are well, in high spirits, you and I have blossomed together. The barns have become cottages, the land we care for has expanded and we have a stone circle to keep us anchored to what matters most. You and I are healthy, the children are grown, and so it is time to move on. My dearest Lodge Farm, I’m not deserting you, there’s no abandoning going on, we need your rock-solid here-ness to come home to, the children and I, and I’m making sure you’re cared for, but there’s something that I want now, too. A London life high-kicking free of responsibility that allows me to walk out the door with just keys and a phone and change my mind on a dime and go where I please without planning. Without driving. Without train tickets and schedules and who’ll look after the cats. My dearest Lodge Farm, I have done my time and I’ve done it well. You’re old enough now and in the best of health to stand on your own two feet. You know how to hold the space for me without the AGA exploding or the pipes bursting. We love you. Be here for us when we come home.

Eleanor

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