I think something odd happened this evening – something worth recording, although it was only small. Lyn felt the need to get out of the house, which is quite understandable given she spends so much time here, so we went to a pub we know on the other side of the park. We’ve been there quite a few times, but not since the summer. We were just walking back, when I felt something: the type of feeling you get when you visit a place which you once knew well but had forgotten, or a place you loved as a child. We were walking past Charlton house in the pitch dark of a December evening when I suddenly remembered the feeling of last summer: I rremembered walking through the park in july, and how beautiful it looks when the flowers were out and the sun was beating down. In short I felt nostalgic.

Reading this back it seems silly, and hardly important, yet in a way this is very significant. The warmth I felt in that moment, as we strode past the dark outline of Charlton house, was the same warmth I felt when I drove out along the lanes back up north: a feeling of familiarity and of homeliness. It tells me that this is now my home, and that here, with Lyn amidst the bustle of this great city, is where I belong.