Oh what a delight it is to write those words above, whilst sitting in a Georgian kitchen, with William Morris curtains, in the Cotswolds, in England, during Christmastime. I can’t think of anywhere better to be, in this moment. I love this week between Christmas and New Years, and the tradition of doing nothing exceptional, at all. This, I think, is a very American sentiment, or perhaps English as well. I think once our hosts are up and going I will find out, soon enough. We’ve been warmly welcomed even though half the house is unwell, sick with a typical, mysterious end-of-year sickness, the kind that arrives when you finally slow down and do nothing. What a relief it is to be enough post-Covid to not be in a complete panic that maybe, possibly, you might die or kill someone you love if you catch this mysterious illness. We all still have the protocols – oh how we have all changed so much in a few years – to keep a good distance, wear a mask, no kisses, no handshakes. But how strange it is that so much has changed in the past few years, less than 3 really, and no one saw it coming. Those who did have been blamed for starting it, but that is another story for another day. There is no more soldiering through an illness, no, it’s isolation, the go-to now. So we wait, we have patience, give space, hold space, take care of each other’s wellness a little bit more than before. No worries, we will be here, we understand, and thanks for understanding. This time last year we didn’t go see a new baby, to keep her and her parents safe. Gone, or at least put aside for now, are the obligatory visits ‘just because we were there’. Now we have a bit more understanding of the human nature of each other, the fragility of wellness, in body and in mind, I hope.

So here we are, today, with a fresh cold sunlight melting the condensation on the gloriously-old glass, leaded-paned windows. I would open one to air out this perfectly proportioned kitchen if only I could figure out how to do so without breaking it. Even though it’s lasted more that 200 years, I don’t know if it will survive me, so I let the kitchen fan do its best. The space in this cottage is perfect as well with Georgian proportions that are made to fit and function with the human size. Yes, the doors are a bit shorter, as we have grown a bit taller and also lived a bit longer since, due to better nutrition and medicine, too. Yet somehow, everything just fits. One feels at home in the spaces, as though they are somehow an extension of one’s self. A box made for you, like a pair of nice new shoes, snuggly wrapped and protected. There are colours that harmonise, and change with the light, to ease the spirit and soothe the soul. The Willow Pattern curtains give movement and joy to the room as the light comes through them. Soft greens and blues and creams work together, timelessly, as new and yet ageless as they would have been, some two hundred, and then one hundred, and then two years before. This is the elegance and the wonder of good design – that it always works. It doesn’t have to be changed or updated because there is something so true and lasting about it. What good designers, architects, builders, masons, and theorists too have always sought out is to discover what is true for us humans, what fits us, what is made for us, and what will last and prove to stand the test of time. There have been many writings, not many of which I have properly read, only skimmed or forgotten. I hope, I believe, that I have retained enough understanding of, to now know what it is that I mean.

I know that I have always felt that truth. Maybe it was both learned and inherited, from my father, his mother, and perhaps our ancestors even before that, for if it holds true that I go it from them than why not – perhaps it has been with us forever. I learned it as well from them, from drawing with my father since as long as I can remember. He was always drawing, on papers, on napkins, everywhere, always imagining and realising, getting it out of his head as fast and as often as he could. I remember his first design for our house, like a miniature rollercoaster track, rising up and down through the dirt, I would walk along it, balancing, when I was younger than my daughter is now. I wonder what memories of me that she is making, has made, and I hope that I can give her better ones now that I am sober and back on my track. I learned it as well from the sense of my grandmother, and from being immersed in her collection. That is what her house was, a collection, a museum of fine artefacts and souvenirs of a life of adventure and wandering. She’d lived the American dream. Born a poor farm girl she married a soldier, worked in the factories during the war, and then moved to Europe during the reconstruction. He eventually became a captain in the Air Force. They lived first in Germany, then France, then in Japan even. All the way she bought Antiques at a song, and amassed an impressive, luxurious collection of things that she loved, high and low. For me this was richness, comfort, and normal, as besides my scrappy parents’ style it was what I knew and I soaked it all in, all its history, style, curves, imagery, elegance, and ornament. To everything that happened in that house it served as the background, the set decoration.

So here I am now in this small but perfectly Georgian kitchen, feeling just at home in my shoebox, waiting to go outside to discover the crisp English day between Christmas and New Years, and to see if the English enjoy doing nothing just as much as me.