What’s in a view? Well, cash for a start. Properties with a view rented out as holiday homes round here get way more dosh than do otherwise similar properties.
It’s pay-per-view. In the morning, when I draw back the curtains, I’m confronted by a view: sea, mountains, big sky.
Sometimes, I don’t even notice it. Then I chide myself: “You must never take it for granted, ya big-nosed poltroon.” I should give myself more positive messages.
The silence, the beauty
When I first came here regularly, staying in the holiday home of friends, it was the view that knocked me out. Well, that and the silence.
Something to do with the senses, I guess. The auditory sense is best when there’s nothing to hear: the Sound of Silence, as Simon and Also Garfunkel put it.
Whenever I pass that house now, provided the weather is clement, I pull up in the lay-by above it and take in the view … and the silence. True, cars come along the road every 30 seconds, but they swish by, and in the hoose with the grass roof, hidden at the foot of the hill, you don’t really notice them.
As with my little bungalow, my friends’ hoose has a view of mountains. Mountains don’t say much. They brood, folk say. Are they brooding about us? I wonder if they think: ‘I’ve a good view of the humans from here.’
You don’t need to be in the sticks for a view. In a city I once called home, I like to revisit the out of town shopping centre with the massive car park, a big boon of which was the clear view afforded to distant hills.
I called the car park the big plain, as in cowboy country, ken? Bit ridiculous, but at least it gave me somewhere to tie up my steed (“Volvo”).
Memories of Orkney
The scenario reminds me of Orkney, which is flat and consequently has amazingly widespread views across land and sea.
I must see the sea. It’s what makes islands attractive. You get an idea of the natural boundary. The jigsaw coastline imprints itself on your brain, giving a stronger sense of place, or home, than you get in a street with high buildings on both sides.
Back in the city, I also recreate the hillside suburban walk that I used to embark on daily, stopping occasionally to look at the view across the wee metropolis.
It’s fine to see it at a distance, to be above it all, beyond the hurly and even the burly.
The nearest hill
Hence, everywhere I live, first thing I do is locate the nearest hill. That view from lofty suburbia is the opposite of my current home vista, where I look at the heights, rather than from them.
Even without mountains, you can have a vista, as on Orkney. I’m your man for space, and always liked Orkney for that. Makes you feel you can breathe.
I was going to say it stops you feeling penned in, but I guess an island, with its visible boundaries, does hem you in.
But, as long as you’ve space where you stand, and for a good way in front of you, including to sea, then it’s all good. That, at any rate, is my point of view.
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