Wednesday 26 February 2014

2014

I am so ashamed of myself - its nearly the end of Feb 2014 and I haven't even looked at this blog for such a long time.
I don't have writers block I have a block abour writing itself. Perhaps I know that once I do start everything else will fall away and I will be jealously guarding my time, and at the moment we do a lot in our lives and I don't want anything to interfere with that precious commodity - time.

Time is a curious concept. We have clocks to measure it, so time must be progressing at the same rate every day, so why is it that time seems to run ever faster for me. I can't begin to believe that I lost Glyn nearly 10 years ago. TEN years. Its the same as from 10 years old and at school to 20 and being away at the Academy and learning about life. Ten years is a huge amount of time. No wonder Proust wrote so much about it in La Recherche etc etc. And so does, in a much smaller and more accessible way, Penelope Lively in her book Ammonites and Leaping Fish which deserves many quotations being copied out.

We were in Spain just a month ago, watching the hills turning into brides covered in confetti as the almond trees came out in blossom. This year, more than ever, it was the country that called to me and not the hotel or Nerja in particular. If I were alone I would live there, endure the summers but love the rest of the time, and it is only really bad around July and August. Oh well. That was another life. Life after Life as Kate Atkinson might have put it.

I miss the mountains, I miss the views, I miss the sun and the depth of blue in the sky. I miss the lovely relaxed atmosphere which is so much a part of the country. I love the language although I don't speak Spanish. I just would love to go back and go back soon, It will be next year though before we do which is a shame.

Now, here in Leeds, its dark and damp. I suppose that the diagnosis of COPD that was finally put onto my records has rattled me. I am fed up not of coughing, but of the exhaustion that comes with the condition. But, I will not be defeated. I will live in the sun by the sea one day. I will.