Our New Foreign Country

On the way back from Cornwall on Saturday we took a detour off the A30 at Roadford  Lakes.

Later we walked ( a little way) in Ashcombe  Woods with this wonderful view of the Exe Estuary and  the mustard yellow rape fields making it look like a David Hockney painting.

The beech leaves are so new and soft and beautiful,

shining with hope and promise as another spring unfurls.

 Today Robin comes back from both his morning and afternoon outings with lovely support workers saying how much he enjoyed them. He hardly rests at all and I give him a green smoothie for lunch. He seems to be getting used to the idea of moving downstairs when the time comes.

I do some more de-cluttering and sorting out of papers and books. Leaving drawers and shelves echoey empty. I also find stacks of old letters from my mother and pieces of my writings.  So I have been visiting that 'foreign country of the past' - dipping in and out of the life and times of an unrecognisable me.

I bring myself back to the present and make supper  - cheesy scrambled eggs, speckled with chopped wild garlic  -  a soft doughy roll for Robin and  granary toast for me. And I can't help remembering those Sunday night "Red Shelf"  kitchen suppers of my African childhood - on our cook's night off when my father took over, and made us cheese or eggs on toast. In my memory they were always flavoured with  the feeling of illicit fun and truanting from the 'proper' food at the dining room table.

 Like eating in front of the television now. Except that's more about not having much to talk about anymore. And harder anyway when one of us is feeding the other....getting used to our new foreign country of the present.