A little perspective

Blimey, what a week, and what a day. Ive just got back to my studio after a jaunt into the countryside; primarily to visit a portrait client but I also took the opportunity to scrump a huge bag of apples and pick the last of the blackberries on the way(its apple and blackberry crumble for me tomorrow...!). Seeing as I had nothing to transport, bar the apples, I took my rickety little bicycle rode up over my beloved South Downs, down the other side at breakneck speed and on the way back managed to break my bike chain with 5 miles to go so had to freewheel the last five miles down to the sea. One the positive side it highlighted that Im not as unfit as id thought (a 30mile round trip, half uphill is a good test) and best of all I enjoyed a moment of joyus perspective, standing on Devils Dyke (one of the hills of the downs) looking out over the Weald (big flat bit between the South and North downs), surrounded by the busy, living quiet of a hillside copse and everything bathed in the hot pastel shades of a dying sun, backed by the hazy gold of an almost autumnal moon. The perspective being that no matter how tricky life can feel in the center of a busy city, tennis balled back and forth from house to studio, bank to gallery, how startlingly important the minor grievances of tumultuous relationships or gradual depletion of a dwindling bank account may seem, the world goes on. The grass continues to grow, rabbits go on eating the grass, foxes go on eating rabbits. The sun rises, the sun sets; the world continues to turn. In our urban hives of industrious existence, where everything is designed, everything is placed so carefully, observed by so many and worried about perpetually its kind of comforting to think that outside of ourselves the living world en mass just...continues.