This month, in addition to four new pieces on The Velvet Cushion (The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste; The Manxman (how could I not?), by Hall Caine; and Soul Brother, by David Diop), there have been 23 posts on Purple Tern.

Twenty-three posts... Unprecedented... Literally so -- never before achieved on Purple Tern, not even back in the days when we were "travelling for real".

OK, so I make a lot out of what others would consider a little, but all the walks and little explorations that have become posts have been meaningful, so I make no apologies. And, in any case, my conception of "travelling for real" has changed markedly over these last few ghastly years.

So, lots of output. Partly it was the joy of reacquainting myself with the Isle of Man. As the weeks rolled by, we moved from the delight of (re)discovery to the ease of familiarity -- and then on to the pang of looming departure. I shed a few tears as we waited to drive on to the ferry.

And I still miss it... The gull-flecked sea, the never-very-distant wild, the lushness that coats everything with moss and ivy and lichen... The little roads, the little fields... Kipper baps and queenies... Manx radio, and the Mannin Line, and "Ramsey Bakery time" (everything is sponsored)...

I don't miss the wind, which was relentless. But the rest of it was such a pleasure that I now fully intend to make the Isle of Man a yearly part of our itinerary (we all know, of course, how well these intentions usually work out these days).











Anyway, we're now nearing the end of our second week in Derbyshire, which is a very enjoyable place to be.

The weather has been seriously weird. So warm one week, so ridiculously cold the next... It SNOWED on us today:







But Derbyshire is undeniably a hugely rewarding county, and it's surely exemplary in its capacity to change and adapt. From industrial output to leisure provision; from mines and railways to country parks and walking tracks... How this works for locals I'm obviously not qualified to judge, but the transition has made it a fabulous place to visit. There's something interesting around every corner.








Just over two weeks of our British Isles sojourn remain. As things stand at the moment -- and I really never now believe that anything I plan is going to happen -- the next month's end will find us in Turkey, on our way home. (Part of the rationale for this itinerary is that we still have Istanbul-KL tickets to use up from the aborted trip two years ago... And on plans, do read this, by the super-perspicacious Pam Mandel.)

One of the reasons I'm expressing myself a little guardedly about Turkey is that the Other Tern is indisposed. Tension headaches. Quite what combination of events has produced these nuisancy things is unclear, as he's a laid-back kind of guy, but they're pretty debilitating. So we're back in the midst of another round of adventures with the medical services (pretty much the same profile as last time, in that you can't get a National Health Service appointment, and have to go private).

Maybe the warmth of Turkey will be good for him... Certainly, the private doctors there will be cheaper... But I don't know at this point how things are going to develop.



I'm more than a little dispirited by this new snag, and can't help but feel we've been exceptionally unlucky during this trip. The emergence of Omicron (still very much with us); protracted tussles with the National Health Service over vaccination records; a hire car snafu; two lots of credit card fraud; two lots of illness...

I think my resilience has been worn down somewhat by these long years of anxiety and unpredictability.

Because it's also true that so much has gone RIGHT that could just as easily have gone wrong: we've met up with family on both sides of the Irish Sea, in the teeth of all the possibilities for these journeys to go belly up; we had a really great Christmas; we've seen so many fascinating and inspiring places; we've watched the shift of the seasons from the golden leaves of late autumn to the rioting blossom (and untimely snow!) of early spring, without being massively inconvenienced by the weather; and we've sampled so much new CHEESE...


I feel as though I have less courage these days...

Despite remembering the positive. Despite remembering how much horribly worse life is for people not that far away from us ("...there’s no getting out since the light sketched in the flesh and blood of shadows the war will end sometime and then where will you go peace doesn’t exist what is that anyway...").

And when you're too easily discouraged, you're too easily subject to other undesirables, like anger and loneliness.


Maybe I need to try this practice (if you have time, listen to Thich Nhat Hanh reading it in Vietnamese, which is a beautiful language, albeit one I'm not going to attempt to learn):

For Warmth
by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face between my hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face between my hands
to keep my loneliness warm --
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands to prevent
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

Every morning, every night... Just hold your face between your two hands...

I hope Nigel will soon be better. And I hope next month will be better. But that's not really the right way to put it. I keep waiting for the breakthrough, and it doesn't come. So what I hope is that next month I will be stronger.