Somebody's Great Aunt Lives Here (Two )

I had a rare visit from a friend yesterday. Since she lives in lovely Weardale on a sheep farm I tend to visit her and just to prove how long it is since she appeared in the hallowed halls of chez moi she gasped out,
'Oh, New kitchen?'
It has been there for five years!!
I do try not to envy people. It's a useless thing and I keep on reminding myself that other people's lives are just as difficult as mine and how lucky I am and so on and so on but yesterday I did find it difficult not to envy her her rich full life. It's a hard life running a sheep farm,  know that and she is incredibly good at all those things I would be useless at, like the financial problems, the business problems, the -  0h dear, I'm trying hard for  negatives here, some help would be nice.
She has a lovely husband, I went to school with him before I went to school with her so we have been friends almost forever.  I used to go and stay on her parents' farm. Her dad who had been captured at Dunkirk and whose hair had turned white then, was lovely, funny and used to dance her mum around the kitchen.
Her dad used to come to the mart at Tow Law where I lived with my family and she used to come with him.  I don't remember much any more, my feelings are all caught up in the hurts of my life and the joyful times tend to come second or third or so far  back that I can't find them. So we sat and chatted and I could not put from my mind the view from  her dining room window over the land I love best and hows she lives there in one of those lovely longhouses with her husband. Her two sons work on the farm and they hire out farm machinery and themselves to drive them to keep everything going. One of about to marry, the other has two small children, one of each. They have a huge network of friends, they love their lives, they never want to retire and they have each other.
Who wouldn't envy her?   As you all know too well by  now I live alone and after she left I looked out at my perfect pots, my neat lawn and the folded knickers in my drawer and I envied her so much that I could hardly breathe.  I thought finally I really have turned into the Great Aunt in one of Bertie Wooster's lovely stories.  He goes to tell her that her nephew is in gaol and when he walks up the drive everything is perfect and I thought yes, she was on her own and weeding her flowerbeds had become so important.
I got over myself of course. I looked to see what I was having for dinner and it was chicken in a spicy sauce with very fresh vegs, and I opened a bottle of wine and I sat down at my little table in my little back room. I had just been outside and changed the water in the birdbath and as I sat down at my desk five starlings landed and began bathing together.
I've been trying to find a new title for the book I'm working on and as I sat there and the starlings did their spa bit I thought of a new title and I could see the cover and all of a sudden I remembered who I was and what I was doing and how lucky I really am. I have so much. Other people's lives wouldn't suit me and mine wouldn't do for them.
Today I'm having lunch with another friend, one of my best friends. She has been divorced once and widowed twice and boy do we have things in common, north country women, alone and all together. She's one of the gutsiest people I've ever known and yes, I have room in my life for all my friends whoever they are and however they live.