My childhood years were spent in a beautiful stately home in the south of England. An imposing stone masterpiece set within the rural moor speckled countryside. The house had several hundred rooms and a gloriously stocked, high-ceiling library. My personal room was situated towards the front of the house. I remember the large sweeping bay windows with the worn oaken sills-just large enough for a slender child to lie. The honey morning light would ooze through them onto my carpeted floor, creating the perfect sun kissed reading spot.  I would sit on the sill and gaze out the windows onto the lush moors until the colours would blur and the sky would shine. The colours of the wilderness beyond our manicured gardens had always enchanted me. The ashen blue sky contrasting against the vivid grasses of speckled violets and deep greens. I could see the rich life pulsing out from ground into the air in the evening mists. The grey-pebbled, gated drive which kept out the world melted away into the moors roughly 30 metres from the house, and there I would sit peering past the gates into the world.
In the centre of the view from my room into the distance was a singular barren tree. Although tall, its dark branches were withered and dying; the trunk had split and formed a little shelter. It was known as the Meavy oak. I used to pretend it was an old man who had come to the moors to rest his tired spindly arms after a long day, so he had rooted his legs in the living soil as he waited for spring.
In the warmer summer months I would borrow a dusty book, an old patchwork quilt and I would sit in the tunnel between the legs of the old man Meavy. I liked the smell of the sun on the bark, the dew on cool grass beneath me and the drifting wafts of far off wild flowers which would occasionally swirl in and out of my little tunnel.
The moors sang to me, the twirling wind through the long grasses, the gentle and steady hum of micro-life, the sporadic neighing of a horse and the rushing of a crystal clear steam interwoven to play the most beautiful melody. However as an only child with little family and disinterested wealthy young parents I was plagued with the cold touch of loneliness.