It’s been a great summer. One of many changes, all good. One of adventures. Both of the mental and the actual kind.
Max is now 10 and I took him interrailing this holiday. We had wild plans of France and Italy, lake Como and Venice and the Riviera. But he’d underestimated how much he didn’t like moving around and waiting around and making a new home every few days. He got migraines and homesick and we decided to come home after a week. But what a week! We packed in tons. Nîmes, Cannes, Camargue, lots of sea and river swimming and gelato, trains and train journeys

This trip had been planned since Christmas, and I’d wanted to do a nostalgia wallow along the south or France coast as that is where I met Jon when I was 17, the reason I eventually ended up here in the UK. We’d lost touch in 1990 and despite occasionally looking for him I’d never found him. I’d loved the many weeks we spent sleeping on beaches in Cannes and Nice and every town in between but we were kids and I wondered how much would have changed. I know I have changed! And then a little while before the holiday I found Jon. We talked and met and fell in love again. It’s weirdly stupendously magical, we connect in a way we never did as teens, and on every level. So suddenly this abstract nostalgia was experienced not just by me but by him too, talking to me whilst traveling the old trainlines and revisiting where we met and hung out. So unexpected! He still lives in Cornwall and right now I’m on a train heading south to spend a week in the little seaside town that was my first base in England 29 years ago! A whole week of chips and beach and waves and boats and walks and meeting up with his mum (she’s ever so chuffed we are back together!) and meeting his daughter. I absolutely cannot wait. I may never come home!
Max is going into year 6, and the big lads are going into their second year as students. Most of the year the house is quiet, just Max and I and the cats. And the students of course. And we adopted a new cat yesterday, an absolute love monster we’ve called Romeo

As it’s starting to smell of autumn outside and as my tomatoes are ripening on the allotment my thoughts have started back on the annual back to school thread. But not just for the kids and the students but this time also for myself this time. I’m enrolling on a textile degree, something I’m extremely excited about! Just sorting student finance (haha anyone who’s ever had any dealings with them knows there is nothing “just” about them but fingers crossed!) and then I’m off. I’m gagging to learn and explore and experiment again. It’s an online degree so I can work and garden and do yoga and hang out with kids pretty much as always but I’ll also be reading and writing and making, being super creative again! Visiting the Royal Academy summer show just cemented how badly I need to make art rather than clothes from a pattern again! I want to crochet huge stuff and knit weird things! Like this:

So watch this space. New things are afoot!