Delightful Dilemmas

Why is it that a derelict building in a cityscape becomes an eyesore, whereas the tumbledown remnants of a building in the heart of the countryside strike one as ‘romantic’? What prompts this enquiry is the return journey from visiting some friends in Leeds.

Once I overcame an initial panic attack, this was after all the furthest afield I had travelled during the past eighteen months; I enjoyed observing the man-made rural landscape, the patterned hedgerows sometimes complimenting, at others sharply contrasted with, the gently undulating countryside. Nothing jarred; the occasional agricultural dumping ground or, even the odd quarry site, whilst a scar to some, for me had that sense of belonging and, as we passed a decrepit old stone building, rafters akimbo, with vacant gaps where once was a window frame, it seemed worthy of a place in a C19 painting.

For several minutes, I delighted in the variegated green patchwork of fields but then, as we followed the road’s gentle curvature, the fields were still blanketed in pristine snow; somehow these areas had fallen outside of the sun’s catchment area.

It is wonderful to enjoy these simple adventures, in realms not much more than a giant’s stone throw from one’s own doorstep.