I am in a cosy place: a self-catering cottage next to the small castle/large house I was staying in last October. There is a wood-burning stove to my left, warming the place up, as well as the teapot placed on top of it. Outside, the fallen leaves have carpeted the ground with gold, but above it is grey, cold and rainy as only Scotland can be, and at 2.40pm the evening is beginning to draw in, thus only serving to emphasise my cottage’s Gemütlichkeit.
I am reminded of that locus classicus of childhood comfort, Mr and Mrs Beaver’s home in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and by an amazing coincidence I am but three minutes’ walk from one of the first colonies of beavers to be established in this country since the 16th century. (I was disappointed to learn that, unlike the beavers of CS Lewis’s imagination, beavers do not eat sardines, or marmalade on toast, and neither do they operate sewing machines. You would also not want to visit their homes, which are basically half-flooded.)
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