A new chapter....

It's late. My mug of tea has gone cold and I am fixed by the wary, unblinking stare of a delicately formed nocturnal wasp who has mistaken the papery globe of my room light for a full Cornish moon. Judging from its prominent ovipositor, I guess it is a she; and I am reliably informed by my 'Complete Guide to British Insects' that her name is Netelia. It's a name I'd associate with a Russian ballerina - feminine, delicate, elegant.

I arrived twelve days ago. It hardly seems like two or three. The cottage is homely with a wood burner and a buddha in the back garden. The grounds of the estate fall away under a deeply shaded canopy of turkey oak onto the shore of a large freshwater lake fringed with reedbeds and sundered from the sea by a shingle spit. The coast is crenelated by warm rocky coves and the air is soft.

I have two housemates, Len, a wirey, red-bearded, well-travelled, poetry-penning buddhist who has been here 6 months already and who extended a warm welcome to me on my arrival; and Davide (pron. Daviday) a large lad and ex-accountant from a place near Turin in Italy with a passion for football and an insatiable appetite for extending his English vocabulary and who claims to have lost no less than 13kg in the last 2 months since he quit the desk job and came to England. All three of us are this season's voluntary wardens for the National Trust in this area and share Keeper's Cottage, the accommodation provided by the Trust in return for our full-time work maintaining the estates in the local area. Our remit extends to the Godolphin and Penrose Estates.

The last two weeks have been full of new experiences I'll relate in coming entries. For now, I'll sign off, but this evening I am encouraged to think that unlike Netty my desk-side companion who was seduced tonight by a false light, false goals are behind me and a new chapter is opening.