New Beginnings

Thank you so much for all your comments on yesterday's post. As you gathered, I was feeling a bit bleurgh.

In fact, I'd resolved to give blogging a rest for a bit. It struck me that most normal bloggers post once a week, or thereabouts, not every day.

It's time, I thought, to cut down. Moderate.

(Can you see where this is going...?)

This morning, instead of heading straight for the laptop with my cup of coffee, I picked up a novel.

But I felt scratchy. Ill at ease. My hands had nothing to do, and all these words were buzzing round my head like bees trapped in a jam jar, desperate to get out.

So, here I am. Typing away. Once an addict, always an addict.

(But there are worse addictions to have. I should know.)

It's difficult to remain in a grump when you're in Cornwall in the springtime. Which is where we are.

Family SM upped sticks from the big smoke for a few days blowing the cobwebs away by the sea. Just in time for Storm Katie (don't you love how they've started giving them names? It's difficult to feel so cross when you've been introduced to the thing that's drenched you.)

But now the clouds are clearing, the clocks have changed, the sun and the daffodils are out. It's a time of new beginnings, and summer is just around the corner.

This time last year, I was not at all excited about the summer. I'd done four weeks sober and was very much in the 'one day at a time' phase.

I couldn't look ahead more than a few hours, let alone a whole season.

And when I did think about the summer, it was with a terrible sense of loss. All I could picture was summer scenes past, which always involved me clutching a chilled glass of rose, or some fancy cocktail.

If that's where you are now, then listen up. Because there will come a time when you can look months, even years, ahead again, and with a sense of optimism and excitement. More than ever.

Back in the drinking days I'd started to lose that wonderful anticipation, about anything. Everything seemed silted up with a general feeling of ennui, a sort of here we go again. Same old, same old.

No longer, my friends. Now I'm thinking SUMMER! Long, lazy days filled with sunshine, salt, sand and ice cream.

Yesterday we spent two hours playing Pooh sticks.

This was no ordinary Pooh sticks, is was the SM version which, obviously, involves no moderation of any sort. Rather, it requires a lot of shouting (and barking), running, and a smidgeon of cheating.

You need three drinking straws in different colours (we send #3 into the pub to get these because she's seriously cute and no barman can say 'no' to her. Just as well she doesn't order a vodka...)

You then drop the drinking straws into the fast flowing stream way up by the car park and run really fast down to the beach, quite a way down the hill.

The stream flows under the road, and pops out through a bridge onto the rocks above the beach. We station a look out at this point to check progress, and to make sure nothing's got stuck. There are two more lookouts lower down the stream as it tumbles over rocks, down mini waterfalls and round whirlpools.

Eventually, the stream reaches the sand, and one of the straws is declared the winner.

Who needs the Caribbean and room service when you have three plastic straws and a Cornish stream? The simplest things are the best, and really do not need artificial stimulants to make them any better...

The only thing freaking me out, is that last time we were here - back in August - I was surfing the waves, doing long cliff walks and feeling really, really healthy, with absolutely no idea that I had a ticking time bomb of a tumour nestling under my left boob.

How could I not have known? How is it possible to feel so healthy, yet be quietly self destructing, let down by your own rapidly mutating cells?

(To follow this story, start with this post: I Need Help)

So, my friends, grasp this Spring, this new beginning, with both hands, for none of us know what is round the next corner.

Love to you all, and thanks again,

SM x