mortality, and summer (this is not an end but a beginning)

At the start of this summer I resolved to spend as little time in the house as possible, and between work and weekends away I've pretty much achieved it. When I am here, in the evenings, I usually recluse myself in my room, reading and writing and having long phone conversations with Iain. So it happened that today was the first Saturday I've stayed at home since my birthday, and I realised how much I'd missed this, the simplicity of a lie-in and pottering around the house, how beautiful this place can be with the sunlight streaming through the windows and birdsong outside.

I walked through the village to the postbox, via the graveyard, and found I felt surprisingly at home. In the five years or so we've lived here I've largely spent my time trying to avoid it, but I seem to have accumulated affection for the place without realising it, a fondness for the colourful gardens and ivy-covered, redbrick walls. I haven't attended the church for years (my father is an excellent priest, but he's also my father). The graveyard is lovely though - I took some photos of it a year or so ago. I've always loved graveyards. I suppose it comes with being a vicar's daughter; I've grown up with them, having to go to church an hour early on a Sunday morning while my dad was setting up and stay half an hour afterwards. My brother and I used to amuse ourselves climbing the yew trees and playing among the headstones. We'd scare each other silly finding cracks in the full-length tombs and pretending we could see bones inside. These days, I simply think they're invariably pretty, peaceful places, quintessentially English. I like the unevenness of the ground, the way the grass dips and rolls over ancient, unmarked graves like a bedspread.

That said, I've never wanted to be buried. The idea of returning to the earth is appealing in a way but it's not for me; I hate the idea of a coffin and I certainly don't want anything so permanent as a headstone. Whatever happens to us after we die I'm sure it has nothing to do with the body, and storing it and marking it seems somehow beside the point. I'd like to be cremated but not in the modern way - the indoor incinerator appalls me. Whoever outlives me, whether it's my husband or daughter or grandchildren, should do it in the old way, burn me on an open-air pyre, say prayers, dance, have a celebration. The symbolism of a burnt-offering is something I just find wonderful; the smoke rising visibly to heaven; the wind tousling the flames.

There are yellow roses growing at the front of our house and I wanted to pick one for Iain, but it would not survive the post and they had opened too wide to be properly pressed, their petals splayed and stamen quivering in the air. At this time of year even the flowers are in heat.

I've spent the afternoon illegally photocopying texts for next year, (Virgil's Eclogues and part of the Georgics; selections from Horace's Odes, Satires and Epistles) and skimming the pages as I go along I've begun to get genuinely excited about the course next year. Last night I had my first going-back-to-Downing dream of the summer - slightly surreal and disturbing (I got there to find that rather than sharing a set, I was actually sharing a room, and it was only about twelve feet square), but it made me ache for it nonetheless.