1.This is page 1 of the section on Somerville House.
2. Please click on “Somerville House” in the above menu to see the drop-down list of other pages in this section, and click accordingly to navigate between and to them;
3. Ideally, this section of the website should be viewed while listening to Delius’s “Song of Summer” - click here to go to Utube for a recording of this piece (3.4.15): no longer available, sadly, due, it says, to copyright issues;
4. Sunshine at Somerville.
Did the sun always shine at Somerville?
Today, 5th June 2008, about 60 years from when, approximately, I first remember being there, it seems as if it might have done. A fairy land for a lad of about 6 or 7 years. So much garden. So many places to explore and wonder at. So different from home. The aromas of fruit and vegetable production, and of the workshops. Of oil and wood and machines.
And out there, out from under the cool delicious shade of the multiple apple trees, and of the workshops, was the warmth and energy of the sun. And birdsong. And life itself. With all its promise. And in the sunshine, in that warmth and energy and growth and the music of birdsong, came to that boy, the intuitive knowledge that ‘this is it’. This is life at its wonderful best. The moment when you can easily say to yourself: This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
And so it has been this morning. Just in a simple way. Nothing spectacular. Just a realization that ‘this is the moment’. In a simple way, things can’t get much better than this. Good health. Love. Home. Nature. Birdsong...... and all the rest.
(not finished 5.6.2008)pba.