I’ve always lived in cities. Even after weeks of living in a village that we’ve been visiting for years, there is the dislocation, the welcome strangeness of being on holiday. There is a sense of unreality as we drive around familiar lanes. As always, the place feels just out of reach, and not ours. But we are here to look closer this time, to try and embrace it; to find out if the deep sense of peace we feel is real, a part of an actual life here.

“The fear which prevents us from being ourselves…  from coming to life… may mean nothing greater than the fear of giving up the image of a certain job, an image of a certain kind of family life.”

Christopher Alexander, ‘The Timeless Way of Building’

But there are so many images, so many versions of Life lived in the mind; which to choose? Which one of these imagined, dreamed-for lives will be right and true?