One of the hardest lessons in life is letting go. Whether it’s guilt, anger, love, loss or betrayal. Change is never easy. We fight to hold and we fight to let go. — Unknown

Not many Blogs lately, too many words in my head, little I can express...

I am working soon, time with one customer in the cardifC area, which is good, and then back to where I was last.

My bag is packed, fur-baby has her normal pet care in place...

She knows I'm going, and before I go it I'll be back!

I haven't  slept well the last few nights, so not holding out much help for later, getting a lift to the airport, not having to worry about carparking which is good.

As you can tell, as you know... This is a difficult time now.

The open road.... It really is isn't it?

Yes, its been a while! I hadn't realised, been busy editing a book and just being....

I am going to begin with a dream I had last night, very symbolic... I was on land, and I had to cross a large expanse of water... I could see no land to my left or right... The water was frozen in parts, I knew I had to cross it, someone was with  me, a man I couldn't see, but I felt his strength.  I walked over the lake, even the parts with no ice, and I reached the land on the other side.

And it felt right... Telling me to brave the divide and take the risk...

I have kept on forgetting to publish these two photographs of Plaza Alta! How bare the square looks now, and so open!

And I was thinking yesterday, how in the year following my mom passing, for the two months I was with her, I read my own Blog up to when she died... I read it and re-read it, constantly for those two months stabbed those words into my very heart... Like a real blade, because believe me I felt real pain... As I am sure I would now, reading it again.

I have not, nor will I in the foreseeable future read this time last year. I think I would bleed, my heart held together now with hope and love and some hard as nails glue... Would shatter and I am deeply sorry for bleeding on the pages of my Blog... I am sorry I realise now how painful my words were for everyone travelling the road with me, family friends and unknown friends... but of course also, I couldn't have made it through without you...

This morning I visited our neighbor from Calahonda, had a good morning, coffee, Colacao! And good conversation... Went to Aki for some mastic and tile paint then home.

Then I suddenly got really tired, and went to bed for a nap!!!

I went out like a light, missed calls on house and mobile, I didn't hear them!! When I was almost waking up, yet holding onto sleep I felt like I could choose where I was, when I was even... It's a strange place, like a twilight zone! They, whoever they are, say we are at our most physic in that inbetween place... Of course normally an alarm is going off, and I wouldn't have had this experience, it's only when I nap, and there was no external noise to make me know where I was or when!

It's okay! I am okay!

Mijas Pueblo

This morning walking Pippa, in a break in the torrential rain... I pass as every day a tree now in bloom; over the past week more and more little pink buds have turned into flowers... This tree was full of bloom and returning leaves last March and April when Franco died...

This morning as I stopped beneath and looked up into its bare branches and small flowers I thought how life returns eternal... and that even if life cannot always be seen life force never leaves... I've always said this, always will say this because I will always feel this, that our energy lives on; with us when our bodies live, but our energy our souls, live on eternally afterwards... In what we have done, in where we have been, people we have loved and known, in the difference we have made in others lives even...

Mijas Pueblo

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of my mom passing... Eight years.  Time continues on its merry way doesn't it, it doesn't care, it doesn't take away anything either, it doesn't take away the loss or the missing or the sadness.  It changes it, we have to change because we can't live with that degree of loss and continue to live.

Some days its like we can time-warp back, to that one moment where time stood still... because that one moment lasted forever, a big empty blackness of eternity for us, unable to see the eternity that had opened up for our lost loved one... I am again reminded of a sermon at a funeral of a dear friend, when the minister said... "Imagine our loved one on a boat, sailing away from us, from our coastline, headed out to the horizon, towards a setting sun (that bit I think I have added to my memory of it!) Well that vessel carrying them away from us is also carrying them towards a new horizon, where we lose sight of them, others get to see them again." And adding my extra shillings worth! I feel, that they travel to a new day, they travel with the light, not away from from it.... Away from us but towards others... past and future maybe even.

On the way to Coín yesterday about 10am

I should check when I last wrote... Okay, that seems like ages ago! February 24th... Yesterday I went to La Trocha with a neighbour, showed him where to park etc, walked around the quite empty underground parking lot, so much rain, so few people! We had a nice break in the weather yesterday...

We had coffee there, saw a few friends, everyone was outside in the outdoor bar, nice to be out and dry for a change!

From there we went to Mijas Pueblo, as he had missed the village a few times when they have been out previously.  He loved it, so now knows how to get there, where to park and where to take people!  Another coffee and boquerones fritos!

We have rain rain rain! I can't even remember when it started now! The skylight has been leaking since day one! The contractor is coming out to fix that! My U-bend has been leaking, but fixed now. Also the direction the wind has been blowing the rain, it has been coming in under the cap on the chimney, so a constant stream of rain water has been coming down the chimney to the wood burner! Unluckily its been making its way out of a small hole in the pipe near the connector into the burner itself! And into a bucket!! There is one more place the rain water has found its route through! The cave of course, as it would by nature with this amount of rain, it must have only happened about 3 or 4 times in all these years... Or maybe I don't remember... but its coming in through the cracks in the cave, making its way down as water does, gets into the cave, onto the tile then down onto the little patio and out through the drainage system!

And still it rains! But the worse thing has been the wind, gusts of up to 95 kph... about 60 mph, something like that... the roofing is trying to lift off, or at least it sounds like it! It is just giving into the wind, or the pressure of it I guess... It sounds like something dragging!

Still, the Pipster and I have been warm enough, had the burner going when we needed it, its much milder now, despite the rain and winds...

The worse thing is being marooned in the house! The worse day the electric started going off and on, and then just staying off!

I've had rain soaked clothes drying every day... Pippas towel constantly out! She only stopped one day, and went about 18 hours without 'going'!!! It was just to fierce outside!!