Gallivant: verb informal
Definition: go around from one place to another in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment.
Nest: noun
Definition: A place affording snug refuge or lodging; a home.
“You can go other places, all right – you can live on the other side of the world, but you can’t ever leave home” Sue Monk-Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
The expression to gallivant holds within it the promise of exploration undertaken with joyful abandon, energy, curiosity and optimism. It is also curiously old fashioned word, suggesting something not of the modern world…more akin to adventures undertaken in hot-air balloons and steam trains. The grand tour of Europe. It certainly hints of swagger and style.
A gallivant can equally encompass the concentrated pleasures of a day out.
I have a lifelong love of gallivanting.
I also love the pleasures of a beautiful home, the pursuit of a sublime hotel or guest house and the discovery of a gem of a tea room or cafe.
What can be better than to gallivant and wherever you find yourself, to find a nest that nurtures the senses, however fleeting the stay.
With these ideas in mind, my hope is to share some gallivants and nests.
My own nest is a former Farmhouse located in a valley in a remote area of France.
To paraphrase the English writer, Flora Thompson “The hamlet stood in a gentle hollow, in the curvaceous, verdant département known as La Creuse….”
Creuse is the French word for ‘hollow’. So in reality, the hamlet stood, and still stands, in a gentle creuse, within French département known as the Creuse.
For many years, I lived in an area known as Cornwall’s Forgotten Corner, and whilst the Rame Peninsula still bears that sub-title, it has long since ceased the be ‘forgotten’.
The Creuse though is another matter.
Since childhood I have been irresistibly drawn to colour, texture and the arrangement of objects. My earliest memories are of cutting out pictures of furniture, soft furnishings and lighting and creating room schemes in scrap books.
I went on to study Interior Design, and have had work featured in several interiors magazines. The photograph at the head of the page was one, and is of a kitchen I designed for our own former house in Hastings, East Sussex, England (Cabinetry and furniture by John Lewis of Hungerford).
My gallivants are frequent owing to being married to professional violinist and being responsible for managing his touring commitments. Being in charge of the Diary means that I am free to plan itineraries that feature lovely locations.
Why not?
So here we go. ..
gallivant & nest 