I am, by my own admission, a grass is greener type of person. I’ve written about it before and I regard it as a definite weakness of my character, which is quite serious isn’t it? I am always thinking of what’s to come rather than what is. I do not live in the moment, not by any stretch of the imagination.
And that’s the problem, I have a vivid imagination which is always coming up with new things to do, of how life could be better if I could only get schemes x, y or z or any other letter of the alphabet, or projects as in last retirement blog, up and running. I would be so happy then. Complete tosh of course and I know it.
Only happy until the next hankering comes round the corner, tooting look at me, I’m here for you and your happiness. Yet the greenness of grass elsewhere still persists in my imagination. I know this to be true because of our Colorado land. This although I’ve never come anywhere near realising my Colorado cabin scheme even though we’ve had the land up near Durango for about thirty years.
I occasionally read The Durango Herald, on line of course, and that’s as close as I get to building and living in that part of Colorado. OK, I hear you say why are you telling us this now – and again? The clue is in the picture / link below which as usual I hope works as it is meant to. Click on the picture to get to the article.
This link, and the article that it presents, popped up on my phone this week. It is written by Tom Jamieson, a reporter on The New York Times of all papers, and it describes the making of a new series of All Creatures Great and Small. This has long been one of our favourite TV programmes although we have not watched any of it or read any of the books or even looked at the DVDs we bought, for quite some time. We’ve moved on.
Now we watch gentle violence in the form of Fargo, Penny Dreadful and Boardwalk Empire. I much prefer (not quite the right word) violence against humans than against animals which I cannot abide. But then this article came along about a new series of ACGAS. Probably made with American money but that’s fine as long as they don’t alter its bucolic gentleness.
I haven’t seen any of the new series. I tried to sign up for it on Amazon at $2.99 an episode but it wouldn’t let me as we weren’t in the USA. Who’d have thought it? I dare say it will get to us eventually. After all we only provided the actual setting.
It was this setting, i.e. the Yorkshire Dales, where we have the barn / vineyard, that provide this setting, just as they did (with a little artistic licence) in the books and the first series all those years ago.
The article and the link, as well as describing for American readers (it was the New York Times after all) what the series is all about (and it seems to have been popular with American viewers), also included quite a few photos of the areas in which it was filmed. These are some of my favourite views of Yorkshire and reminded me very much of our barn and surrounding area. I’ve included a few of our pics to prove it.
And this is where the ‘grass is greener’ issue comes into play. We haven’t seen the land in Colorado for approximately 10 years and very little of our barn and vineyard in the last 10 months, on account of lockdown. I wrote a bit about the problem of distance and the (potential) cabin, in a fairly recent blog. So the point is that both are floating around in my fevered brain with a good deal of hankering-after following close behind.
And then I thought why am I hankering for Colorado when I’ve got all this? Not that I have got it at the moment but you know what I mean. Oh, you don’t, well I mean it is likely that we will be able to visit the Yorkshire Dales before we can visit The Rockies. And here’s the question – why would I not be happy with that? Why must I hanker (that word again) for our little cabin (minimum size according to the resident’s association of 600 square feet I think), when we have all this? See photos above and below for area round barn and vineyard in autumn, winter and summer.
So I promised a more upbeat retirement blog this time and I think I’m close to having delivered it. The message – be content with what you’ve got (or very nearly got) and don’t be peering over the fence at some other grass. Technically this is correct but in reality, well we’ll see …
