I start most days sitting on the veranda with a cup of tea. Even on a chilly winter morning, the sun warms me. I love watching the mist rise and roll away from our little valley and I’m always enchanted by the comings and goings of the birds. It’s a fix of nature that sets me up for the day and I feel so lucky to have it. But would my day be different if I didn’t face this lovely scene each morning?

The view from my childhood bedroom in South Wales was of a large Victorian house used as a children’s home. While that might have made me appreciate the stability of my own loving family, it was the building itself that intrigued me. I would gaze at the columned entrance porch and the smooth stone that framed the tall windows, a contrast to the rough stone walls, and the slate roof punctuated by tall chimneys. It was Italianate, I suppose, as some of the large houses in that area were. And what had once been a sweet market garden shoehorned among these large houses was now a modern subdivision of extraordinary blandness, in which I lived. Looking from my modern box over the street to the grand and rather spooky building opposite had an impact on me, stimulating a curiosity in architecture, I’m certain. My understanding that you need time to sit and look at buildings to really understand them comes, I think, from ten years of gazing over at ‘The Elms’.

Most of the other homes I lived in thereafter had no views to speak of. Suburban gardens, busy roads, brick walls. In one London flat I couldn’t even see the sky from the window of my basement bedroom. I don’t remember being bothered by that. Except that in the early 1980s, I visited a friend who lived high up in a council block on the Isle of Dogs, its urban renewal still just a plan, and I remember being astonished by its far-reaching views. All around was a wasteland of derelict buildings and abandoned docks but further away, over the river, I could make out the grandeur of Wren’s Naval College in Greenwich and the greenery of the famous park. Maybe that’s why I bought my first flat in Greenwich some years later, the memory of an oasis in the city (although the flat I bought was on a busy road and faced a pub).

Views are a Sydney dream. Being able to glimpse water, whether harbour or ocean, adds considerable value, as I suppose it does in most cities. But I’d never come across such a fixation with views. It means that trees are often poisoned if they are in the way. When we lived in Sydney, we looked from the back of our house to a beautiful green wall of mature trees, including a lovely old English oak. It was all swept away when the houses behind us were demolished and replaced by a townhouse development that virtually covered the entire block. It made me wince to see it when I knew what had been there before.

It’s taken me a long time to realise that views are good for our health. Gazing into the distance rests the eyes, which is why holidays in big landscapes, at the beach or in the mountains, can be so refreshing, especially if you’ve been stuck in an office cubicle most of the year. Last year, after a lovely but quite emotional trip to the UK, we stayed in a farmhouse outside Wengen in Switzerland that had spectacular views of the mountains and down into the Lauterbrunnen valley. It made me gasp whenever I looked out, and  my chest would swell as I drank it in. It felt like the perfect place to reflect on the weeks that had just passed and prepare myself for life back in Australia.

Because that’s the other thing about views. They’re good for your mental health. It’s the way they give a broader perspective, quite literally, and connect us to the shifting patterns of weather and the wonder of the sky itself during the day and at night, all of which puts you in your place, in the very best way. Even when the view isn’t considered attractive, it still gives you a sense of place. When I lived in my little flat in Greenwich, in times of stress I would walk to the top of the park and gaze out at the rising towers of Docklands and beyond. It was a salve, particularly during the grim days when I grieved for friends lost to AIDS. The view into the distance gave me a sense of hope.

So maybe that’s it, as I sit with my cuppa in the morning. It’s about hope, if only for a good day. Sensing the rhythms of life around me and being part of it. A grounding energy. After all, isn’t perspective another word for a view?

Do you have a favourite view?