My ambitions, hopes and dreams

Right now, I don't seem very admirable or even ambitious.  I am lying in my vast bed in my father's apartment in Dublin with his laptop on my knee drinking a cup of tea and working my way through a box of Fererro Rocher.  It's a very elegant scene, but perhaps a far cry from my current set of ambitions, which is roughly to be Sheherezade Goldsmith.

What do you mean you don't know who she is?  That's rubbish!  Did you not see the article in Vogue a few months ago?  With the pony and the pretty dresses?

Just in case you have temporarily allowed her to slip your mind, she is the pretty 30-year-old environmentalist wife of Zac Goldsmith the ecologist and together they have three children, a farm and fabulous wealth (the latter might contribute something to the fabulousness of her house, wardrobe and lifestyle, but might not be indispensable to the general principle).

So, the plan *without* Goldsmith-level wealth is to have three beautiful children and when my husband and I have both finished our doctorates and one or both of us gets a job I think that we should somehow buy some land - about 20 acres - with a pretty farmhouse a short ride by train from the university where the job has been acquired and have an organic farm on some and plant oak trees on the rest.  Or at least, a substantial kitchen garden and chickens because my husband is vegetarian and I am silly enough to become sentimentally attached to livestock, so a non-meat-producing farm.  Then, because Passementerie will have become such a runaway media success, I will find myself swamped by lovely designer dresses and I will call my good friend Mario (Testino, of course) to come down for the day for organic scones and our own honey to take some pictures of me in my pretty dresses while I tell a journalist from the Guardian about organic farming and motherhood.

Doesn't that sound like a wonderful ambition to have on a wet Dublin morning?

Oh dear.  My friends who recommended that I allow my sense and practicality to shine through every so often on Passementerie are going to be very cross indeed when the read this.

In fairness to my practicality, the oak tree part is quite sincere, but pertains more to Ireland than England.  Ireland was once covered with oak trees but was horribly deforested in past centuries and it has long been a dream of mine that if I ever settled rurally here, I would buy land to plant with oaks.

Do you have any environmental fantasies, however practical or impractical?  Is there one thing you would do, if unrestrained by financial or other realistic considerations?

Images with thanks to Chris Jackson, Cotswold Cottage, Springbank House and Green Fingers.

Comments

[Leslie]

What a lovely story. I think we share the same dream...um...err...except I have the two perfect (now adult) children...and I'm far too old to consider a doctorate. But one can dream.

[Persephone]

I think that is a *fabulous* plan. Don't let a little thing like money stop you.

If I had my druthers, I would spend three months traveling through West Africa, float along the Niger River, and take lots of pictures. And write in my blog, of course.

[Pamela]

I myself have wished to be Stella Tennant after seeing a similar Vogue profile.

If money were not a consideration, I'm sure my plans would involve animals and shoes.

[anne]

Can't keep up with you!!!! Never know which country you are going to pop up in next:-)

Love the wellies :-)

[Melissa]

How about Annabel? she led a very interesting life and is a mother of six: Rupert, Robin, India Jane, Jemima, Zac and Ben-Ben

An admirable and lovely family altogether

[Rhian]

I have an environmental fantasy: an orangery. Tended to by plenty of staff. Living in the country has forever put me off actually wanting to do any of what might be termed 'tilling' of my own; I'd much rather some hoary-handed son of the soil do it for me. Johnny Hayseed, take this as notice that if I ever have a proper-sized bolthole, I'm both looking and paying.

Still no sniff, incidentally, of a taker for my very own slice of rural heaven. Anyone want a house in the Cotswolds, let me know. In fact, Passementerie...?