FLASHBACK 2019: I’m in a place I love and I’m alone - deliciously alone. No-one can reach me. I can’t reach anyone. All I’ve got is the screen ahead of me and food and wine on my tray. This week, I will visit my 30th country. The roundness of this number is satisfying.

If you knew me in the 90s, you’d remember my insatiable need to eat out. In the Clerk’s department kitchen, you’d see my meagre lunches in the fridge abandoned in favour of going out with anyone who asked. At my next job at ICLEI, I ate Thai Thani takeout so often I’m pretty sure I financed the owner’s kids’ university educations. I didn’t have a clue how to cook. A decade earlier, I’d once served a friend Kraft Dinner when I invited her for lunch. Well, it was PC white cheddar zhuzhed up with mushrooms but still…

So it’s Valentine’s Day weekend. The pressure in this world is intense to find someone to love romantically.  I know I felt it for decades until I met Jack. It wasn’t worth compromising to love someone who for me, wasn’t worth loving. Even though I had only nine years with him, I feel lucky - the love was real and reciprocated. Many are not so lucky - and yes, I believe it’s really a factor of luck.  

I’ll never know whether dad was playing with me and my fascination with the royals. He’d left England in part to avoid the class-based society that informed his childhood. Although he would have bristled at the notion, my dad was a socialist, and he demonstrated that with all he did.  As a luthier, his post-farming career, he made sure his instruments were priced so those of modest means could afford them

Wordle - a controlled substance

January 26th and all its facets

cell phone

Here’s to the teachers

The bar