Suddenly this Country Speaks to Me

After 5 weeks away in Europe-proper, the dread grey is hard to take. But visitors are coming, Leathermanman has some days off - so I'll take off out Kerry way for 3 days, 2 nights away.

I was so in need of fresh air, wind, space from endless boy-drudgery, out to endless open spaces where I can feel some magic. And we found them. Wild country, orange and dark grey. Muckross House. Steel grey stone hunting lodge, by the side of the lake, light piercing the skies and clouds, as if the angels were just sitting up above. A scene almost monochrome, the green lawn barely green, the water slatey grey.

Inside Muckross House, it's a timepiece, a journey into Victorian England. With Nora, one of the best tour guides you could ask for. We were led behind the scenes, as if the families had just left, as she told us the history of the house, the people, the romance, the hopes bound up in it all. Almost as if someone might turn up, if we hesitated too long on one of the staircases.

Imagine getting a gift like that as a wedding present! And, before that, the hopes tied up in renovations and extensions and endless gardening expansions - in view of a visit from Queen Victoria. So she came, she stayed, walked up to the waterfall, slept in her camp bed on the ground floor in a room with a custom-built fire escape (she was terrified of fire), no doubt dined on the finest - potatoes and roast and who knows what other heavy Victorian fare in the heavy Victorian dining room. And then she left, no doubt with good intentions. But Albert had the temerity to die soon after her return, and in her grief, the thoughts of knighting her good host at Muckross just fell away. I really felt the colonial past of this house - the expat nature of those living here.

And, by holding the land as one large holding in private hands for hundreds of years, the land could become Ireland's first national park, when the republic was formed and the English landlords were sent packing. If it had gone into Irish hands, it may have been broken up into countless tiny holdings, and not preserved the richness of the forest around these parts. The house stood shut up and empty for years - imagine! - and has since been painstakingly restored. Some photos from the British Museum were used to make new curtains and wallpapers, fitting Victorian times. Did they call it Victorian times while she was queen?

I LOVED walking through the arboretum, alone, in damp, green air, collecting chestnuts for small children, but not hauling one by the hand. (I know, still thinking about them, even when away from them ... but it makes all the difference sometimes!)

A wonderful place to bring visitors from Berlin, all citied-out as they can get. Autumn trees, ancient yew, rain falling by the lake, gold and red and orange leaves. We walk in it anyway as the pram has a cover, and we're rigged up.

A walk to Stanage Edge

What makes a day stand out? It's seeing something you thought you'd never see. It's finding a liberation in an hour, from days and days of being in the harness of humdrum 'ordinary' life..

Meeting Ivan. This uncle, zany, I'd heard about him for years. Finally, the day is on us, I'm dreading it and putting on a brave face - and curious too. There is a beautiful pink rose bush in the front garden, the house high on a hill in Sheffield. Inside, it's a-clutter with one man's stuff, not aired, cleaned or moved enough in a long time. A shelf for the tins for a rainy day - what's the other shelf of tins for? The walls covered in photos, prints of familiar places, like Hungary and Australia.

He's like those uncles of my mothers, that I used to have to visit when we stayed with Omi - a particular Continental sense of humour, wordplay that all know is clever, even though we don't always laugh out loud. Sentimental, referential to other times. So we get on GREAT, I play the mother role with absolute conviction, can just be as I am. Leathermanman says, wash everything, don't touch anything! But we get tea and fruit out, look through photos and his old cameras. The Bean is a PERFECT namesake, shows great interest in the old cameras, wants to know about this strange man, as much as the uncle wants to know about him. The Pumpkin gets hungry, we open one of the Rainy Days tins and eat soup, heated, direct from the tin. I can't write about the bathroom, but I'm touched and entertained, all at once. And I imagine laughing with my mother-in-law about it in future.

A walk to Stanage Edge in the Peak District. Like other walks with my elderly relatives in Germany, all set off, groups form for 'walk and talk'. The Pumpkin and the uncle have exactly the same pace, The Bean and I run, run in the wind over the stones on the edge of the Edge. Liberation. Leathermanman imagines himself bouldering, we are all liberated in this Australia-like expanse, our gazes stretching to a horizon, the view filled with grasses and heather, fields, stone walls, not buildings, not crowding close around us. In the photo you can't see, but LMM and his uncle have EXACTLY the same shape head!

Then we take Ivan back to Eyam Youth Hostel. He took the first photos of it, when they first started promoting themselves long ago - and is DELIGHTED to be out for a night. We fold children into their bunks and drink a bottle of wine outside in endless late summer light. There's much hilarity and tales of lives lived before we all met up today. Lovely.