My own personal pathetic fallacy (better than my own personal Jesus, although less tuneful)

For most of my twenties, I lived in London. I lived pretty much everywhere in London – in eight years I moved eight times – so I got to know it, if not all over, then pretty well. London is busy (genius award coming up, Sarah) and chaotic (genius award confirmed), and I was busy and chaotic, and it suited me perfectly. Life is so fluid in your twenties (at least, my life was so fluid in my twenties) and London was the perfect place for that. It was grimy and noisy and constantly shape-shifting and, yep, so was I for the most part.

By the end of my twenties, though, I was getting a bit sick of the constant motion of the big city. I’d slowed down and my not-so-hidden inner country girl was getting more of a chance to speak. And in came Seattle. OK, OK, so it wasn’t exactly that straightforward, but my point is that just when I was craving nature, along came nature. Big nature. Scarily easy access to far more wild animals than I’d ever like to encounter (cougars in the hills above the city; bears in the university district, for God’s sake). Seattle is, was, forevermore shalt be, a fab place to spend a decent chunk of my thirties. There was cocktail-drinking, sure, but there was also a LOT of the outdoors. Friday night drinking sessions were replaced by Friday nights sailing on Puget Sound, watching the sunset across the Olympics whilst knocking back the odd gin or tonic with some of our favourite Americans.

Anyway, my point. I spent this afternoon in our garden, here by the sea a few miles outside Dublin. And I am small, and due to a great need for everyone to like me, mostly friendly. So, following the city, my life has moved from random underground bars; it’s moved from the mountains and the lakes. It's moved, quite literally, to our backyard.

The wee ones and I were joined by our regular Tuesday pals – five “ladies”, as Jonah calls us, and eleven under-sixes. The trees were full of blossom, and full of foam rockets being shot into the branches, and not so full of small boys falling off said branches trying to retrieve the rockets. Toddlers were tackling the too-big swing set. Everyone was belting around; there were fights over the pull-along Dalmatian; tears were shed. It was great.


These days a lot of time is spent like yesterday. Hanging out with my pals (and the little boys’ pals) in someone’s garden, or hanging out in our garden. Sure, it’s great from time to time to visit an old life, but right now, this is the right life. And yeah, I know it isn’t as hugely-coincidental as I’ve just made it sound, and I know, too, that people have all these sorts of lives in all these sorts of places. But bugger it. I just liked the pathetic fallacy of it, that's all.