I found myself with an enforced absence from home. My son had requested a birthday party. He is a young adult, a ‘bounce back’ after university, so he didn’t want us to organise it.  Rather the opposite: he asked if we would absent ourselves while the party took place. Since my husband was already due to be in London during the day, it seemed sensible to suggest he stayed up there. And I was set free.  A wet weekend in January, constrained by practicalities of budget and my desire to keep the dog with me:  perhaps not everyone’s idea of a treat but one that translates well into my scales of pleasure and excitement.

I’d recently read A Curious Friendship by Anna Tommasson, had been amazed by Edith Olivier’s life, and this was a chance to visit her hometown of Wilton. For me, the only way from Hampshire to Wiltshire is along the A303, and (I concede this may be slightly perverse) improved if you journey via Dorset. Admittedly, not the most direct route, but how dull, how utilitarian, would that be?  This great western routeway is a pleasure in itself: the undulating landscape, periodically bathed in soft winter sunlight, punctuated by signs to old, old settlements with their peculiar ancient place names. Then drop down, clipping Yeovil, approaching the narrow, deep, hidden lanes which lead to  East Coker, made famous and described in TS Eliot’s Four Quartets.

Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village

There was an intense time in my teens when it felt as if TS Eliot was all mine – my own thrilling, personal discovery.   Alan Bennett describes it perfectly, through Hector in the History Boys:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

So, take a moment to find, once more, the church,  the small memorial marking that the great poet is interred there, pay homage and give thanks. Sit on the bench in the churchyard, overlooking timeless fields, and read.

Then back on the old roads, the A30 through Sherborne and Shaftesbury, mileposts giving the distance to Sarum, not Salisbury, and so to Wilton, once the county town. Lovely place, full of idiosyncratic, crooked, English architecture. A huge, bizarre, Byzantine church. Aristocratic Wilton House is emphatically NOT dog-friendly which meant I didn’t mind it being closed and was content to peer through gates. Somewhere in those grounds had lived Edith, at the Daye House. I paid my respects at Edith’s grave and it was pleasing to find her name, as mayor, on a civic plaque marking the restoration of some old church ruins. Remarkable to reflect on this woman’s life and its richness.

A search for dog-friendly accommodation had resulted in a b&b booking at the Queens Head in Broad Chalke. Never heard of it; turns out to be have been Terry Pratchett’s local and was complete with Discworld baron. Mulled cider, dinner, bath, read. Then turning to read something new.  The ‘good book’ – essential for the success of this enterprise – was Mr Foote’s Other Leg by Ian Kelly. A delightful surprise: readable, informative, insightful, amusing. The best sort of companion.

In the morning, would the dog like a sausage at breakfast? Would she! We were both reluctant to leave – except that the pub walk beckoned (3 mile circular walk starting from the car park. Perfect) and, eventually, so did home.

A wet weekend in January.  Sometimes things just come together and it is possible to be fully in the moment, and grateful that they happen.