… and everything in its place.

I’ve just returned from four weeks at home in Beckenham, a trip arranged mainly to sing in three concerts but also to make more progress with sorting out my house, doing the sort of maintenance tasks that frequently elude people with busy lives and fraught priorities until they suddenly have the time and space of a window of three weeks in which to accomplish them.

There was no major building work to arrange or supervise this time, with the exception of smart new doors designed and made by a superb local manufacturer. More importantly, in my view, I started nesting, to make my home into a place of rest, retreat and peace. A place to unwind, cocooned from the troubles of the world.

The concept of home takes on a new meaning in the eyes of the professional expatriate, I’ve found. I have friends who’ve been rootless wanderers their whole lives and happily bed in and flourish wherever they land. I’ve always envied this ability to adapt so wholeheartedly to change. It’s not something I can do easily. I find it difficult to buy disposable furniture knowing that it has only to last a couple of years and has no need to withstand the rigours of a house move. Yes, I’m acquisitive and I have quite expensive taste, but that’s only because once I’ve fallen in love with something, I want to enjoy it until it (or I) has fallen into a sort of unfit-for-purpose decrepitude and has to be replaced.

I am not a natural expat. It’s no secret that moving half way around the world was not what I would have chosen for myself. To me home is security, a place of comfort, of being among beloved people, with much-loved things. Hygge. I took this opportunity to install some beloved acquisitions and I was really quite alarmed at how much I enjoyed feathering this nest of permanence and spending time alone, closeted and just being me. In these truly abominable times that has taken on an even greater importance. A defiant imposition of order amid chaos I cannot control.

Perhaps it was in this spirit of defiance that I called in a handyman to put up the pictures that had been waiting in storage for years; I bought some rugs and a cosy sheepskin and I finally tidied out the redecorated music room.

The spice rack in the picture that I brought home bit by bit after initially having it shipped from its sole stockist in Australia was finally put up in the pantry. Everything organised. Everything in its place.

As was I. Despite the welcome intrusions of friends coming to tea, of music and busyness, among the fake fur electric throw and the new rugs and candles I felt able to breathe and be me, something I don’t really feel here in the warmth of Hong Kong. I added frames to photographs that had been curling and fading. Restored them. Restored me.