Serial Saturday: Willingworth Farm, Letter One by Mark Colbourne

Willingworth Farm: Letter One

A Welcome to Willingworth Farm’s Blog

June 30th

Recently, and after much searching of the soul, I decided to open the doors here at Willingworth Farm to the paying public. Employing the convenience of a popular holiday rental platform, I began to engage with prospective guests via the medium of the World Wide Web. My home was announced as a retreat amongst the splendour of the Norfolk countryside. A sanctuary where the weary would be welcomed, where the fatigued could recuperate in both body and soul. Without wishing to boast, it came as no surprise when the venture proved itself an immediate success! Visitors would arrive, practically crushed beneath the weight of the daily grind, only to find themselves a few days later floating in a serene stupor. Some of my guests – God bless their souls! – even found a return to the real world a daunting impossibility.

It has been, to say the least, an eye-opening endeavour. The carousel of life which would appear, bag in hand, on my doorstep has never failed to surprise, stimulate or delight. It was an equally novel undertaking to ingratiate myself with the peculiar etiquette of the internet. Initially, I was somewhat bemused and a trifle affronted by the rental service’s imposing demand that the guests should pen reviews of yours truly whilst, concurrently, I jotted down my own critique of them. The ratings, the feedback, the recommendations, the likes and the references… Those odd and time-consuming waters into which we are all forced to digitally wade.

However, it was not long before this element of the process became something that I began to cherish. Not, I assure you, because of the opportunity to whinge or complain, nor even praise and flatter. Rather, it was the facility to build a record of those who had stayed with me that stirred my appreciation. An electronic log; an online book of remembrance. Sadly, the limitations of character and space enforced by the website review system were a trifle restrictive for my tastes. Therefore, I decided to grasp the nettle. With a leap of faith and any number of stumbling technological false starts, here we find ourselves at the beginning of my very own blog! And so, I welcome you, oh dear and gentle reader, to my modest little corner of the information highway; to my own brief and commemorative record of those who came to stay at Willingworth Farm.

Yours

Peter Edingly