It's still quite warm over here. We usually get a couple of cooler days, than the heat comes back. It's two more days, they say, and then it's over. Housekeeping is necessarily reduced to the basics, while summer entertainment occupies evenings and weekends.
When the temperatures climb up, the only thing left to do is sit outside and read or draw. I'm still trying to learn a two-point perspective and re-reading Miss Silver novels. I've come across an interesting passage which I have to paraphrase since the book is in Dutch. The main character returns back to the village he grew up in.
East or west, home is best. No place can compare to the one where you first became aware of your surroundings, where you knew every tree, every house, every man, woman or child, and where you could look around with the knowledge of the fact that for three hundred years men of your own flesh and blood were leaving their impact on the environment to make it what it is now.
(The watersplash/De Lankmoedige Erfgenaam, Poema Pocket 2000 pp.45-46).
Flesh and blood matter. Your family matters. People aren't interchangeable consumer units which can be transferred at will from one place or country to another. They make their surroundings into what they are. Having roots is important. It's a pity so few realise it nowadays...
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