My Week and Dropping Stitches

 When I leave the house this morning the sky is ready to break open with fine misty rain,

the air is full of the sound of water trickling down the side of the road, the flap of pigeon wings in leafy branches, the harsh calls of a rook,

the hill feels steeper than usual and I take my head full of images and memories of the last week,

and start to walk myself back into the regular rhythm of my quiet Devon life.

The amazing Peamore House, home of  the family of Lady Jane Grey, on the outskirts of Exeter where my dear friends, who we have known for more than 35 years, stayed in an Air B&B....

I haven't seen them for a year as they now live in another country...so lovely to hang out with them...

re-connecting...adjusting to being three of us when we were always four... feeling the lack of Robin's

huge presence at the table....remembering him.... he is knitted so deeply  into the seams of my old life....and now, making new memories without him, is like dropping stitches every row.

On Friday with another dear friend in Brighton...we go a long way back to our EFL teaching days in Hastings....and now she is struggling with Alzheimer's...painful to watch her struggling  to eat the salad lunch I brought with me....painful to witness the loss of her strength and co-ordination, her memory...but not the loss of her dry wit and sense of humour or the twinkliness of her blue grey eyes.

Saturday I spend in the delightful company of my dear niece and her  little family... we buy bread and fresh fish - a giant lemon sole for supper in their local street market...

and walk through the huge faded grandeur of the Crystal Palace Park... 

where Robin and I used to come when we were newly married...

and  explore the dinosaur park...

but I don't remember the herons or the Sphinxes. ...and now my sweet niece who was only three years old when we got married has a husband and baby of her own.

On Sunday morning I drive to Coulsdon for the occasion of Robin's nephew's 18th Birthday... his mother has prepared a marvellous spread for 30 people.....I'm glad to be able to help with the food...the house is full of memories of other occasions when the children were little, always climbing all over Robin....all that tickling and laughing and chasing and cuddles.....now all grown up ...

but still as sweet and loving to me as they have always been...nephew so tall and strong that he 

 lifts me off the ground in a  huge goodbye bear hug... something sweet to take home with me as I

drive home....passing Stonehenge on the way...drowning out the aching longing for Robin's bear hugs....just one more time...with the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's album,  Born in the USA, blasting into the bedrock of my bones.