Magic happens. I ended up at Mount House because that's where the path went, I can't take any credit for it whatsoever. Next to seeing loved ones, it's the Most Important Thing To Happen in a long time.

B&B is a misnomer. You walk through a blue gate into a garden that is simply running rampant with bloom. Nonchalant in its beauty, uncontrived, stunning. And you think, well, aren't I lucky? It gets better.

It's a large red brick home, rimmed in garden. You follow around to the left, step in a door, and you have the entire end piece to yourself. Downstairs, an impossibly charming kitchen--with a table under the window that I settled into with my laptop and had to be forced out of. Plus a living room full of just that, the trappings of living. Intelligence and beauty and quaintness and warmth.

Up the stairs are two bedrooms and a bath. I claimed the small one for myself. It has a big window, out from which I found MY CHAIR. You'll soon see why.

But mostly, this house could have been made of tin, for the most important part, of course, are the people that came with it. She, retired from publishing. He, retired from the papers and the BBC.

More? You say, "There can't be more." There is.

She grew up here. In another house, but has lived in this one long enough to belong. To get here you drive past the car park, until you get to the Coffee Shop at Sissinghurst. Then, on the left, do you see that gate marked "Private"? Drive past. Just like you know what you're doing. Up ahead, around the curve, through the blue gate, you're there.

She'll tell you about Vita. What it was like. How it evolved to be like it is. Tell all your English major friends. Or the literate among you. You must come here. Laugh. Think. Be. Amidst beauty.