It is Winter, the British city is bustling. People wander the cold, paved streets. The forest of concrete that is the city centre serves as a means for people to get from one place to the next. They show no interest in looking past the repetition of their day to day lives to find greater meaning. They don’t have time. Time to realise how engulfed their lives are by the thick, tangling roots of their 9 to 5 jobs. The city has contained them and their lives and they don’t even realise. Even the sad, twisted oak trees planted at even intervals along the paved main street have forgotten their meaning. They will live their life not knowing about the expansive forests filled with their brothers and sisters that lies just beyond the veil of the city. They are stuck there, sitting within their mud, brick and concrete grave; much like the rest of the people of the city. Even within the concrete forest humans and nature are indifferent.

Stop and listen, for one second, and maybe the uncorrelated misaligned thoughts that every wanderer of the city are thinking simultaneously will gain sudden clarity. But sadly that is not the case as it would all be washed away by the awful tune emitted by the city. The harsh vocals of the busy commuters, the deep and delocalised hum of empty stores and the radiating echo off of the imposing concrete walls surrounding the narrow, grey streets. Each tile of the gum littered pavement lets out a loud clack with every heavy footstep and the skyscrapers creak disconcertingly just like the forest on a windy day. This sombre song would be trapped within the city by a thick layer of fog that lay just at the top of the tall buildings like the canopy to a forest.

It is Summer. The roar of your car adds to the song of the city. It groans into a start, filled with belongings, and crawls up the tarmac of your narrow road lined with red-brick terraced houses. You turn on the radio and focus on getting to your long awaited destination. Soon all that lies between you and the redemption of the countryside is a dual carriageway encased in vividly green oak trees. The roots of the city, the thick tangle of highways, thin out as you get further and further from the city. The road glimmers with the sheen of rain showers passed and you start to see less and less cars the longer you drive. You eventually, after what seems like forever, reach the fated gate. The doorway to your release. On either side of you are endless golden fields of grain, glimmering in the Summer’s sun, and in front of you, the road to British heaven.

Your little Peugeot 207 trundles along the thin gravel road, surrounded by ancient oak which are too, surrounded by more oak. You go around one bend, then another and finally one more. You see it. The cabin. It is around 5 metres long and 5 metres wide. Thin wooden boards shoot upwards until they are met by the steep slanted roof covered head to toe in asphalt shingles. Ivy creeps up the four posts that meet the corners of the roof trapped in a decade long race to the top. An ancient black stained door grudgingly lets you enter. The familiar smell of mildew like an old library floods your nose almost like the cabin welcoming you back. Night falls. Candles propped up in black iron candle holders litter the room and flicker with the turn of each page. You sit on the dusty rocking chair right by the only window and, absorbed in your book, think to yourself. You are miles and miles from home yet you have never felt more ‘at home’.