Where I Live

For the past 31 years I have lived in the Vale of Glamorgan, and for the past 17 here in this house on the southern fringes of Cowbridge, which is a pleasant little town of about 5,000 folk. What used to be called a ‘market’ town except that markets are, these days, a thing of the past. With it’s curving High Street and eclectic architecture - a mix from medieval to modern - Cowbridge is one of only a handful of Welsh towns that can be called ‘pretty.’ Quite why visual beauty in the built environment should be shunned in a country with such wonderful landscapes has always escaped me, but there we are, others may disagree. The prettiness is one of the reasons I like living here.

It is also well placed geographically - close enough to Cardiff, and for that matter London; just a few miles from the most romantic coastline that you could want, sufficient hills to make any panorama interesting but without the oppression of mountains, brooding smokily beyond your back window. We have castle and a river, a fortified church, in fact an abundance of churches, a little theatre, some renowned clothes shops, a Food Festival in the autumn, a Physic Garden, a small park, a medieval town wall and gate and a Charter granted by Richard III.

The Vale is the bit that bulges out from the bottom of Wales (stop giggling in the back) and is like an amphitheatre, the land rising from the sea, with each set of hills higher than the last. Climb up to Cae’r Mynydd (Mountain Fort), near Bridgend and you can see the entire Vale spread out before you like a map. In fact from here on a really clear day you can even see Glastonbury Tor - 45 miles away.

I was lucky enough to grow up in the country, surrounded by trees and fields and animals. I still need plenty of open space around me. From the house the open countryside is less than five minutes away. Every Sunday morning I tour my ‘domain’ - a stiff walk up Primrose Hill to the top of ‘The Tump’ from where I can see the Bristol Channel and the hills of Exmoor beyond. Then down into St Hilary Woods - carpeted successively by wood anemones, wild garlic, bluebells - and around and across fields full, at this time of year, with young lambs and their patient mothers. Finally, I cross the old railway line that used to connect Aberthaw on the coast with Llantrisant (where the coins come from) and so back home.

Our house is built on the same railway line, or rather it is built on the cutting that carried the line into Cowbridge. We bought it in 1991 semi-finished from the builder. But it was warm and dry - the principle criteria for any house - and we have been here since. The children have moved on, Mother-in Law came and we converted the garage for her and she lived with us for five or six years, gradually declining with senile incapacity. Now the converted garage is our label stockroom and houses several million labels.

Like many houses it was built speculatively on a plot of land that used to be the bottom of someone’s garden. But in trying to maximise his return the developer produced a large house with very little space outside. Still we have a patio on one side, a garden shed on the other and in front a little lawn that is quite large enough for us to entertain on. French people think nothing of sitting and eating al fresco outside their houses in the sunshine, but here this custom hasn’t quite caught on and the neighbours’ faces wear expressions variously of hilarity (the young) studied disregard (the middle-aged) and disapproval (the elderly).

On this lawn is a greengage tree, which this year shows some sign of blossom, and a fig tree on which small unripe figs have hung bleakly all winter. At the back we have a pear tree which always produces an abundance of fruit (but no partridges - though many years ago we did actually raise partridges in a short-lived experiment. But then we didn’t have a pear tree).

I write these pieces in my little office - the single bedroom as was - looking south out of the first floor window past the ivy at a great sycamore on the edge of the fields a hundred yards away. I now use a MacBook for my writing and emails while we use my old Sony PC for the labels. I have attached some pictures, including one to show that we do actually get snow here on very rare occasions.