A home of one’s own
A small wooden house in a new suburb, on the edge of a ‘big’ city. Three kids, a dog, many cats, and a single mum working three jobs to keep our roof safe and warm. A pot-bellied stove for perpetual soup (and heat), twenty-seven fruit trees and a playhouse for mudpies and decorative exploits. Scrappy countryside, mostly peripheral towny. It was bike ride to swimmable water and the fish and chip shop, and an hour bus ride to anywhere vaguely cosmopolitan. It was my home for the first seventeen years of my life. Moving wasn’t an option, instead I just dreamed of moving to somewhere else. By the age of ten, London was the goal. No other reason than a song I heard on the radio and a radical schoolteacher who told great stories of punks and politics, fashion and architecture – and living with a capital L. At ten everything is absorbed. I know what I do now and how I do it, is deeply informed by then.
Moving – house, city or country. Some of us are peripatetic by nature. Others have no choice. Can you imagine? A home of one’s own and a safe home is the very least we should expect. Warmth, food, community and beauty. To be able to nurture a house into our nest of dreams is joyful – almost spiritual. Choosing paint colours, shifting chairs from room to room, or designing a new kitchen are pleasures, not burdens and I hope we give these choices our respect. How lucky we are to have a sanctuary – a place where our horizons are limitless and our foundations firm.
Perhaps because of my up-bringing, I have fallen into the slightly wayward group of people who can’t stop moving. Because when you are stuck, it’s slightly terrifying to think you may never get up and over. We have moved recently – back to London. For the first time we chose location over the house. The view from my bedroom is over a park full of trees, plants, parakeets, people and living. It’s a new part of London for us and I am surprised by how cradle-like it feels. The house is a standard late Victorian – good bones, but nothing dramatic or deeply special in its design pedigree. Looking through those windows towards trees and sky is a surprisingly profound experience for me.
It is a safe and good house. Decoratively not my taste – which almost stopped us buying it, but then I realised this doesn’t really matter, it will become us eventually. I will shape it so that it can then shape me. We are rooted and secure. I know this sense of security changes things. This isn’t about status, or status purchases and it isn’t about how humble or vast your home is.
Refuge means you become both settled and elastic, which seeps into every part of your life. Your daily life and your mundane and huge life choices can unfold differently. Your mind and your inner mind can wander – which is thrilling. You can dream of other things beyond lamps and kitchen islands – or dream about these differently. Having a safe and good home gives you gifts beyond our basic needs of shelter and warmth. You can have focus, freedom and belonging – your life unfolding as it should, rather than worrying about daily survival. Attention skips out of your home towards society or your community – which is a more important legacy for all of us.
This week is ‘that’ week of shopping – false shopping if we were to consider it with eyes wide open. I am grateful for every order we receive, but having a home is a gift and so I know you will paint that bedroom, cupboard or windows when the time is right, and you know what you want and need.
Cassandra x
Photography by Chris Horwood