The road is like my journey

As it's a sublimely beautiful day I set off early for a walk...decide to go beyond my usual turn off to the footpath that gives me a circular route back to the village....and continue up the hill .... I'm treated to breath-taking views across rolling Devon hills and farms.

I have no map and no water and no idea how far to go.... just a vague instruction from one of my neighbours  to turn right at Christ's Cross or Criss Cross as it is known locally....and that will take me back to the village.

Luckily I meet another neighbour ...she stops the car and gets out and we have a long chat in the sunshine. She says yes, turn right at Criss Cross, pass by 5 farm gates on the left and there will be  an unmarked stony track on the right after that.

I find the turning and I walk the path.

Nearly 4 hours later I am home again.

 

I love  every minute of it. The beauty. The warmth. The peacefulness. And the birds.

Even not knowing where I'm going or how long it will take but confident I'll find my way in the end if I keep my sense that the village is always on my right.

And as I walk I think that the road is like my journey now ....very steep and stony in parts but it always comes out on a plateau...with a different view at the top. And always something beautiful to see....something beautiful to be grateful for.

Some things about today

A shy water lily...taking shelter under a leaf in the fishing lake.

 I'm loving these pink roses still flowering in the front garden...

 always reminding me of Mary Oliver's poem,

Roses, Late Summer

......the last roses have opened their factories of 

sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.

If I had another life 

I would want to spend it all on some

unstinting happiness.

Some things about today...

I'm showered with gifts and hugs and smiles in a small Italian cafe.... pampered with coffee and cakes  and catching up with dear friends.

In Waitrose I buy a pale oak coloured, small round cheese with a smaller round on top of it.... like a fat bottomed bottle with its neck stretched into a smaller fat cork..... a smoked Italian curd cheese called Scamorza Affumicata.

 It's an impulse buy in memory of the few days Robin and I  spent with my niece and her boyfriend ( now husband) in Sardinia..... at least 12 years ago.... and a wonderful picnic we had..... laying out a sarong cloth in a clearing of a forest...  on  a hot dry hillside. 

I can't resist  nibbling slim round slices of it as I  cook my plain rice pasta for supper ...back to bland after  yesterday's veggie feast.

I know you can have an embarrassment of riches.

Can you have and embarrassment of tears....of wailing....of howling?

Tonight 

in my bedroom for one

 that still smells of dog,

only the black flies 

flinging themselves hopelessly 

 against the ceiling 

can hear me.

And the brick walls

soak up the saltiness

of my

dismantled soul.

Fuel for my fiery letting go....and only time will tell.

She was sitting on the front gate post this morning and only scuttled off into the hawthorn tree when a noisy tractor rattled past.

I walk with my new camera but it's dismal and  damp. The light is low. The autumn colours are washed out paper white and dead bracken bronze. 

The Calor Gas engineers have finally taken away the old and delivered a new tank. It's smaller and a good clean sage green colour. Makes the old mower garage look even more tatty.

 However I did receive a  £50 compensation gas credit on my bill when I complained to a very nice manager about the endless missed appointment, cancellations  and delays and lack of communication all round which has been going on for the whole time I have been here.

 When I can see it as just  another gift to bring out all my long buried frustration and feelings of powerlessness it somehow takes the sting out of it ...no-one to blame.....just more fuel for my fiery letting go...and healing.

My supper tonight. As my stomach is beginning to feel better I make a sambal of fresh chopped turmeric, chilli ginger, garlic and onion.....stir it into steamed black cabbage, and eat it out of a big bowl along with roasted beetroot and potatoes and a poached egg on top.

So far so good....or maybe a step too far from the bland rice and bananas and mashed potato suppers I've been having. 

Although I was treated to another delicious birthday middle eastern 

 lunch at The Baobab with a dear friend yesterday ....so only time will tell.

" Not too bad ...as we say in English, " to quote my beloved husband.

Nothing I recognise .....and something good.

I'm standing in my bedroom

with two men

One of them know - 

he is the carpenter who built all the shelves

and the cupboards 

and the wardrobes in our other house

over the last 15 years.

He is measuring the space between the wall and the window 

with a long yellow flexible tape.

When we first met him he had dreadlocks and a shy smile.

Now he has teenage children and his name painted on the side of his van.

The other man, who works with him, I don't know. 

He's young and fitted with many silver earrings.

I must have mentioned Robin. That he died.

Is he your husband? he asks

Yes, for 30 years, I say.

He looks sad.

Sorry, he says.

I talk as if it happened to someone else.

In some ways it did.

I remember everything about her.

And everything about him.

I sleep in the same bed we bought together. 

The same framed print of Klimt's

The Kiss

hangs on the wall.

Like it did in all our houses.

But there is nothing I recognise about the life of the woman who

is talking fitted wardrobes 

in a double bedroom for one

that still smells of dog.

They advise against built in wardrobes anyway  - 

too costly they say,

doing themselves out of a job.

I let them out into a sunsetting sky

and give myself the job of 

setting a fire in the grate.

Something I do know how to do.

Something good to root me

 into my unfamiliar life. 

Food and Mood Dairy ....and a Wild and Foreign Country

Sunday afternoon walk with dear friend and dog overlooking Peak Hill in Sidmouth.

First photos with new small Lumix camera. I'm thinking they aren't much better than ones I've been taking for years with current large Lumix camera.

But then I haven't read/learnt/digested anything about new camera yet. So these are just point and shoot and hope for the best with freezing cold fingers in woolly gloves.

These are "my" sheep taken a few weeks ago from the kitchen window.

Today, apart from a foray out for baked potato lunch with dear friend at the Imperial  - a traditional pub in Exeter  with marvellous vaulted window - I stay close to home...at my desk...wading my way through long admin list.

And I've started to keep a food and mood and symptoms diary as I've booked an assessment and consultation with a nutritionist( found in Re-connect Magazine) who may be able to help with my wobbly unsettled gut....I know it's connected to my emotional highs and lows but feel that some practical support could  also be useful...I could be eating things that make it worse.....I just hope those don't include green veggies.... or dark chocolate...my addictive late night treat....( the chocolate not 

the greens).

 

The temperature drops this evening ....it's raining....I pull on a cagoul .... take a basket out to the garage and select some logs from a neat pile stacked up against the wall, all in different sizes. Logs from branches which my gardener says he thinned out from the hazel hedge 2 years ago. They have been waiting in a huge heap at the bottom of the garden by the stream. He came on Saturday to chop them up with a chain saw.

Making a fire tonight from my own logs is deeply satisfying. I feel like an early homesteader in a wild and foreign country.

Keeping the uncertainty and doubt at bay

 in this strange and unchartered land of doing-it-on-my-own.

The Core Message

 This afternoon

While the rain slashes against the windows

and the wind whooshes through the branches of the willow tree and the oak 

I sit on a high stool in the kitchen

peeling apples

cutting them into fat quarters

to lay on the bubbling caramel of a tarte tatin tin

heating up on the hob.

At the same time I'm listening to a Matt Kahn video called

Healing Core Wounds...

which are neglect,

abuse,

co-dependency,

 and loss.

His core message is 

Love what arises....

everything is here to help you...

give yourself more love not less.

Much much later I watch a music video of  BTS -  a young, seven-member South Korean boy band - who could also be young women -  who have millions of fans world wide.

 I find them extraordinary -  slick, professional and incredibly vulnerable beneath their pale make up and coloured hair and dancing feet.

The core message in their songs is

Love Yourself.

 How wonderful ...to learn that when you are young.

But it's never too late to start....today I started to talk to my small and overwhelmed little girl inside ... to reassure her that I  am the grown up and can make the decisions....when the time is right.

Today was the right day to buy a new camera....

and tomorrow will be the day to learn how to use it.