Throughout my life I have observed that if I wanted something badly enough, no matter what it was I usually acquired the longed for item eventually and often by peculiar means. Saying that I have not won the lottery.......yet , in fact I am seldom lucky at raffles, lotteries or such like,my luck seems to be of a different type.
Childhood drawings of mine always contained a cottage with lots of gables, stone mullions,dormer windows, tall chimneys and gardens all around, and since this sort of abode is usually expensive the likelihood of achieving my dream was almost none existent. Providence has set me down in the very cottage which I drew so often as a small child right down to the last detail,except one, my dream cottage was always in a very rural setting.
Sitting now in my room and looking out of the windows it is difficult to believe that the heart of London is less that eight miles away and that here we are surrounded by towns. Every window looks out over trees and fields, parkland and garden, so I thank providence for favouring me, after all one can not have everything.
How I wished for a horse as a child , how over joyed I was when my uncle asked my parents if he could purchase a pony for me, how desolate when my parents refused, I still do not know why.
Just a few months later a fellow rented some of our land and our stables to house two ponies and a horse for his daughters. They were to ride every weekend and spend their holidays with the horses. I was to look after them in between times.
Young ladies of a certain age have short attention spans and when they discover that there were such things as BOYS ,the horses were soon redundant. Happily for me the horses remained at our farm for several years and by the time they were sold on I too had discovered BOYS, providence again you see.
Good garden furniture is so expensive and the cheap stuff often looks awful so when we moved in to our cottage I decided not to spoil it with plastic tables and chairs and made some benches out of log rings and planks. Before the first summer was half done we were given a large old oak seat, a small oak seat, and oak bench and a table, all beautifully silvered by age
and far nicer that anything I could have afforded. I could not believe our good fortune, the furniture looks so at home in our garden, much better than any new highly varnished wooden seats ever could.
Recently when Pa needed a large comfy armchair for nights when he could not sleep quite out of the blue our neighbours asked if we could house a large leather chair. They were almost apologetic about foisting it off on us . It was perfect, it was also brand new, they had overestimated the size of their living room and so they gave it to us. We would happily have paid for the chair but they would not hear of it and when we told them how we had been on the point of buying a chair just like it for Pa they were delighted that they had been able to help.
Today while shopping I noticed that a lovely straw hat which I admired all last summer and considered too expensive had been marked down to £2.50, it was the only one left and I snapped it up with glee. Gardening in the summer makes a shady hat essential and my old one although still just about serviceable is the most disreputable piece of millinery you could imagine and draws down much ridicule upon the head of the wearer, namely myself.
Providence does some times have a down side though, I am a cat lover and my enthusiasm for these elegant creatures has in the past resulted in me having thirteen stray cats in the house at one time........and one of them had kittens soon after its arrival! While making mince pies last December I began to sing I want a hippopotamus for Christmas... my poor boys begged me to stop.......well you just never know with providence, do you?
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