On Devon (Glorious Devon)

"When Adam and Eve were dispossessed

Of the garden, hard by heaven,

They planted another one down in the west:

'Twas Devon, 'twas Devon, glorious Devon."

Harold Boulton (words) and Edward German (music), 'Devon, Glorious Devon' (1905)

Would you ever guess that I live a few minutes' walk from the city centre and yet this is the view across from my house? My deficient photography skills are really not doing it justice.

How long do you have to live in a place before you can reasonably start to conceive of it as home?

We've hit midsummer once again, and I suppose by now I should have adjusted to the fact that this season swings around every year, and stopped marvelling quite so readily at the long light evenings and the clear blue skies and the shirtsleeves temperatures, but somehow I haven't. Perhaps I'm just not prepared to cheat myself out of the joy of it all. And what's extra joyous is how beautifully Devon sets off the advantages of this time of year. The rolling hills and the river, everything green and budding, and the sweeping coastlines and the clotted cream - words don't do justice; you'll simply have to come and stay with me sometime and see for yourself.

How long do you have to live in a place? I've been here six years now, and I wouldn't actually be at all sorry if I were to stay for the rest of my life. So can I start giving Exeter and Devon as the answer to the question of where I'm from yet? Or how long am I rather to remain shackled to the city in which I spent my childhood as my identified place of origin? I was back there a couple of weeks ago, and it was nice to visit, it really was - I'm finally starting to see the principle that absence makes the heart grow fonder take effect on that front - but to visit, there's the rub, not to reside. So how long before the place I've actually chosen to settle myself supersedes the place my parents happened to bring me up in as my true and acknowledged dwelling-place? How long before people stop asking me about when I'm going 'home', meaning my parents' house? How long before Devon becomes properly mine?

And with that sentiment, and the view across the river, in mind, I wrote a poem - not as good as Sir Harold Boulton's as quoted above, I'm afraid, but then, that would be rather a tall order to fill, wouldn't it?

O Darling Devon, would you claim me for your own now?

What you've become to me, East Anglia was not.

She grew me, granted, and I'm grateful, but I'm grown now:

I grew like Alice did, right out of what I'd got,

And it was in your skies I spread my newfound wingspan

When I emerged from the cocoon, a fragile thing,

And wet like paint, to see what I might be to England,

What she to me, now we were past first buds of spring.

O Darling Devon, by some stroke of luck, you met me,

Though, since I don't believe in luck, let's call it planned.

I was uncut, you shaped me; liquid, and you set me.

When I emerged as who I am, 'twas from your hand.

So when the patchwork hills blaze red with dying sunlight,

Or Exwick's lights across the river gleam like chrome,

And my heart's engulfed by fondness as by floodtide,

O Darling Devon, would you let me call you home?