MELANCHOLIA?

We drive to the little village of Ruan Lanihorne, where the King's Head specialises in fish and seafood straight from the sea. After a lunch of wild mussels and sea-bass we stroll through the village, and out along a lane which doesn't have a destination marked, because it doesn't have a destination.
It wanders along the side of an estuary filled with reeds, and the late October sun shines in a delicate blue sky. No con-trails, no traffic sounds. A pleasant house is tucked away among trees, in an idyllic situation.
In the distance there is a gleam of open water, and the hill of Lamorran Woods rises straight from the water level, like a rampart.
We return to the car, and drive off, feeling that we have had a privileged experience.



It is only later that I remember that the lane does have a road-sign. It reads Road Liable To Flooding. And if that is true now, how much longer, in an era of global warming, is it going to be possible to stroll as we did? And will the pleasant house be cut off? Very minor considerations, when one thinks, for example, of the impending fate of Bangladesh.

But why does it occur to me? Have I developed a habit of melancholy, 'that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries'? Or are we living in times which give particular cause for such thoughts? I must take care that this blog does not dissolve in a pool of tears.