An itinerant fate

This is probably the longest time I have not blogged and it was not wholly intentional. I had hoped to blog about my time in Europe and my travels here and there but I found that I had little time to keep this up because I was too busy socializing and let me explain –not so much the party girl, as the girl with a cup of tea and some time.

And that is what I want to blog about today – the sheer joy of connecting with people not just on FB but across the table and in the living room and even in muddy fields. My travels took me back to the family, to my adored boys who have all shown me, in their own particular way, how much it has meant to them to have us for a short while by their side and to this I can add an amusing – well I am not really surprised, I have time to do the washing, cooking, ironing while they come in and out of hectic jobs and long days. To see family and celebrate weddings and significant birthdays in ways which are memorable and meaningful.

The chance to follow the daily news, to listen, as I wake, to Radio 4, to settle down at the weekend with the papers and a cup of good coffee. To take a walk on the Heath and see owners proudly walking their dogs, and pine for my Tara. To remember what it is like for winter to set in, with few hours of sunlight and that drawing in of the body and the spirit.

And also being able, because true friendships are a bit like that, to pick up where we left off, and I can truly say I have done that this time at the cost of blog entries, where lives intertwined for longer or shorter periods of time and where the words flowed once more as if we were in situ. So I have been back to my University, to Kenya and to Geneva and to Delhi with friends who are now in the depths of Sussex or other parts of the English countryside. I have walked with my women of the IWCN, my women’s club in Geneva, and visited venerable writers and commentators, old, old friends who are still getting the maximum out of life at every juncture. I have traversed fields with mud and cows and counted buzzards on the motorways of France and I have felt throughout the joy of knowing that my life has been enriched at every turn I packed and unpacked my home.