Essentially the Only One

(photos by kind permission of Stuart Morton)

I've written in a couple of posts (here and here) about my grandparents' old house in Bramshott, Hampshire, called Heronwater.

Memories, and long gone. Imagine then my surprise when the current owner contacted me through this website and my Facebook page and was kind enough to send me some photographs of the property as it is today.

Looking at this wintery scene, dating from March 2008, the astonishing thing to me is how much is looks such as it did way back in the 1960s and 1970s when I, as a child, played in this very garden.

I used to splash across to those stamp-sized islands (there were a few more in my time) in a small rowboat where I could imagine I was king of a Lilliputian world. The house looks brighter and certainly is decorated with rather fresher paint than I remember, but is essentially unchanged from the outside.

I really had the best of it - a child's memories are free of adult cares and worries, and I could enjoy this small paradise for what it was. It's good to be reminded of those times.

And on a muggy, warm, Missouri day, looking at that snow is most refreshing!