Can You Afford To Dream?
I gazed out over the fields, taking in the vast emptiness and the strikingly atmospheric late evening light.
It would be so easy, I thought, so easy to simply get lost in a place like this. To let myself be taken back to a time where everything about life seemed simple and so very appealing.
But of course, how easy it is also to look back and see the past through modern day eyes. To overlook the hardship and inequality and abuse of wealth and privilege that existed hand in hand with every rural idyll of years gone by.
In some areas history is clear, yet so often we dwell on things that seem perfect and let ourselves get lost in fantasies from another era.
But sadly, ultimately, each visit to a stately home, every awe-inspiring vista stretching out over Capability Brown designed landscapes, every lovingly restored relic of our rich and staggeringly beautiful heritage, has, it seems, the power to depress as much as it enchants.
And how ironic, perhaps, to think that at a time when the world likes to pride itself in putting the worst of its murky past very firmly behind it, well, it still costs money to look out over beautiful fields and dare to dream.
A non-inclusive trip down memory lane anyone?
