Don’t it always seem to go…

…that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. So wrote Joni Mitchell, admittedly about Paradise and DDT-free apples, but it seems to fit the picture at the moment. We’ve moved back to England after 5 years in Wales (the subline of this blog will change soon). It’s strange how much our lifestyle has changed over that time. We arrived as penniless Tesco-value students, and have left twenty-something Starbuck-frequenters, a two-car household with holidays to trendy Europe destinations. It’s not that we’ve struck it rich in a Texan oil-baron kind of way, it’s just turned out that way.

There are quite a few trappings that go with that lifestyle. As Meg Ryan says in ‘You’ve got mail’, everybody needs a ‘third place’, after their home and work. For many that’s Starbucks, and we were lucky to have one we frequented almost every other night towards the end of our time there. Then there was Roath Park, with its enticing lake, rowing boats and Central-Park-wannabe joggers pushing their Maclaren prams around ni little unofficial races. Then, just towards the end there was Cardiff Bay, with its trndy bars and restaurants. The thing is, they’re gone now. I’m in a small village/town. There are ‘tea rooms’ rather than Starbucks. There are open fields rather than man-made parks. There’s no Bay – the sea feels a long way away.

I’m trying not to be down though. There will be third places. Maybe for now that third place will be Cardiff itself, but things change. Instead of missing what’s gone now, it’s good to think of how exciting finding new ‘third places’, although maybe not the pub from last night, where a strange woman came over to ask us what ‘virile’ meant…