Endings//New Beginnings
I'm 35 and it's still the end of term.
Cycling in the Forest of Bowland this week I got caught up in some after-school traffic and realised I’d stumbled across the end of the summer term. The air crackled with a hundred thoughts of six whole weeks of freedom. The drizzly grey clouds that had threatened to pour down all day held off, and the sun glinted off the parked cars and damp leaves.
The end of term is the start of a new life. A regeneration into a new year of growth, a step forward. Six weeks to rest and play before the demands of the world begin again.
I remember the last day of term and what it meant. The buzz and the nerves, the change in routine. How it never came and then all of a sudden, it was there. Assemblies about staying safe and returning refreshed. Buses parked up waiting to take us home for the last time in forever. Sun—always sun.
We left the school scuffed and thin from a year of tests and tight silence, the loudness in our bodies unsure of how to escape, trained for so long to be quiet and still. A world ahead of us. A lapping sea.
Cycling past these kids, I wondered if they knew that living is not a fibre optic flash from birth to death—that their lives would forever be full of these endings and beginnings. Because life is not about books closing and opening. It is a movement in all directions at once. It is unknowable except in the precise moment you acknowledge it. It is yours. It is the constant movement of the clouds, the rippling of long grass, the smell of fire.
You might already know that this week I announced the closure of the bar myself and my husband Tom built together. It has been a hard journey through difficult and often impossible circumstances, and we don’t enjoy knowing that we are taking away something positive from the world. We are trying to look at it from a different perspective—at least it existed. The end of something is only the start of something else.
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Other Stuff
The Farmer’s Arms is an inspirational and wholesome pub in the heart of the South Lakes. Its 100m salad is an idea that makes me happy to think about, their arts and crafts events sell out weeks in advance, and this blog post about the pub’s role in Lakeland Rally’s golden era shows just how diverse a great pub’s community is.
The poem Love After Love by Derek Walcott. Feast on your life.
I love these sketchbook entries by illustrator Kathryn Boyt.
If you’ve not read Rachel Hendry’s piece on wine and the TV show Succession, rectify that now.
Vintage TdF photos for all who are celebrating.
