Licked......
On one of the days between Christmas and New Year, when the world feels like it's holding its breath, my husband and I drive out to the edges of Dartmoor to the National Trust's Parke estate. We
walk along frozen rutted paths crunchy with ice, past white sheep in white fields and along the banks of the river hemmed with frosty bracken, overhung with the naked delicate fingers of beech trees.
I stop to take photos, mesmerised by the winter fairyland all around us. I turn and see my husband is licking the ice crystals off the top of a fence post.
It tastes lovely, he says. And does it again.
Later we stop in a cafe in Bovey Tracy for lunch. While I'm ordering at the counter he lifts the lid off the sugar bowl, puts his fingers in and eats some of the crystals....as if he's never tasted sugar before, as if he doesn't know what it is.
I miss him - the man who used to know what the world tasted like, who had other grown up things on his mind.
I miss me too - the woman me who didn't have to patrol the sugar bowl....or try and supervise my husband's tongue - for fear of the trouble it could cause..... beyond curiosity......still holding my breath wondering where she's gone.
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