Bambi (NorahBrent) is the owner of the Oh Deer brand and is also is well-regarded among Second Life bloggers for her Missing Melody region designs – I’ve reviewed several iterations of that region myself in these pages. However, in 2021, she launched a new region setting – Longing Melody – which I finally managed to visit at the start of 2022.
Utilising a Full region rather than a Homestead as seen with Missing Melody, Longing Melody presents three different but interconnected seasons / settings that offer little hints of England and the British Isles and plenty to see and appreciate.
Visits start at the Longing Town train station, where a train with a decidedly continental lean sits at the platform to form the landing point. Exiting the train places new arrival on the platform (no surprises there), where two maps on the London underground are mounted on the platform walls. One of these is likely to be very familiar to users of the Tube, the other somewhat older and offers a more “natural” look to how London’s underground lines actually sit under the city’s roads and reaches. On a second wall is what might appear to be a further Tube map but is in fact a stylised map of the region that offers clues to a form of homage Bambi presents in the design. Alongside of this map in an information giver for the Second Life Nature Collective club.
Beyond the turnstiles for the station sits Longing Town itself, there the homage mentioned above is largely located, taken the form of links to Liverpool’s Fab Four. The road leading from / to the station for example, is called Abbey Road, home of a certain recording studio and also the title of the group’s eleventh album with its iconic (and much imitated) cover photo – which is also reproduced in the forms of silhouettes of John, Ringo, Paul and George filing across the road.
Before reaching the silhouettes, the road also passes Penny Lane, an alley leading in to courtyard behind the houses lining the road. Beyond the four silhouettes, the road makes a 90º turn to the right continuing to to a waterside promenade called The Globe. This in turn might be a reference to The Globe Theatre, Stockton on Tees in the north-east of England, famous for being the venue for two Beatles concerts that effectively bracketed their “breaking into” the US market after a lot of resistance from US record moguls (and the first of which took place shortly after John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas).
Outside of the town proper, and reached via an arched passage, is a further reference to the Beatles, in the the form of Strawberry Fields, a broad concrete path runs north to reach the second element of the region. Here, beyond the gardens of some of the houses is a more rural setting, a place of meadows, sheep, a bubbling stream, rough footpaths and ruins. And where the town might be thought of as being caught in a late summer, this northern rural area sits more in autumn, a place where the trees are turning a golden brown and sheep and deer roam free.
A canal cuts through this rural area; deeper than the local stream, it is crossed by a single hump backed bridge. The path beyond this continues eastwards, passing between more farm buildings and a large field guarded by drystone walls and home to sheep and cows. Once past these, the path starts a gentle climb to where a high brick wall bars the way, except for the open wooden door set within it.
This wall marks the point where the third of the region’s seasons commences, the hills beyond the wall being blanketed in winter. Snow cover the land, a narrow path winding up between the hills. Here the trees are either fir or denuded of there leaves, all equally frosted by the snow.
Cottages and more can be found on the shoulder and crown of the hill; one of the former cosily furnished, the other a shell. Watched over by foxes, snowmen and polar bears, this winter area offers further places to sit and pass the time and further opportunities for photography.
All of the above just scratches the surface of things. In the town, many of the buildings are simple façades, other have interiors that can be viewed through windows or entered and explored. Similarly, the gardens, the promenade, the rural spaces, all offer places to sit and relax. and needles to say, the region in rich in opportunities for photography.
Sharing a spiritual design with many of the settings that have surfaced within Missing Melody, Bambi’s Longing Melody offers visitors its own richness and diversity that should be savoured during a visit.
SLurl Details
- Longing Melody (Celestine, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 