I’ve been slowly coming out of my bubble, testing the edges, seeing what gives and what doesn’t…..it’s been an interesting journey and I’ve been quite uncomfortable with some of it……
First there was the “holiday with no plans” a rather beautiful, safe and surprising trip to a new bit of Portugal. I’d never really travelled anywhere with no real plans, so this was a massive test in and of itself, the only thing I knew was that I was meeting up with a dear friend, so it was an interesting exercise in going with the flow and seeing what happened, as it turned out a lot happened
I took an impromptu journey across marshes on a little open passenger train to a tuna village on the sea, took daily water taxi’s to various islands
spotted a salt mountain in the distance one day and decided to go and find it
I was only away for 6 days and it was totally perfect in every way, it felt like a proper holiday
Then here was the mad horse riding “holiday with all the plans” in Morocco,
a country I’d been trying to visit for 19 years!! For one reason or another I never made it
after three excruciating days of everything going wrong that could have gone wrong, I called a halt to the trip and tailored it better to suit my needs, resulting in a series of very bizarre events including bumping into an old friend in the middle of the Medina in Essaouira….
I absolutely fell in love with Morocco, so much so that I am going back for Christmas
Three weeks after this, I went back to Portugal. after yet another failed sale last year and yet more stress, anxiety and money, I needed to see how I felt about the land and whether to continue to try and sort out the last annoying and seemingly impossible bit of paperwork and do some much needed work on the land, or whether i wasn’t suppossed to sell it at all?
It sounded good on paper and in fully functioning world where everything works as it’s supposed to, it was a good idea, however……
I’d come in the worst weather month ever in the history of terrible weather
I hadn’t worked on my farm for over a year
I have not tried to live in my caravan for nearly 6 years
My battery hasn’t been used for the same amount of time
I have not lived off grid for the same amount of time
I know that, quite appropriately I have been micro-managing my life since the fire, I’ve had to and it’s a perfectly normal response to that event, and then the others that followed….so I can forgive myself that. My land on the other hand is doing what land does best when it’s left alone by man, it’s wild and feral, full of life and colour and chaos. Trees have fallen down and other (unwanted) trees have sprung up, there is water everywhere, water where it’s not supposed to be and terraces have collapsed
and some things just don’t give up easily, like my asparagus !!
I tried to get as much work done as I could in between the endless pouring rain but when temperatures plummeted and I’d endured several nights of being pushed around by the wind, I finally realised that this struggling life is not for me, it was Rick’s thing, not mine, he loved to push himself way past his limits, he got off on it, it motivated him…….I think that in order to live with that sort of behaviour I’d gone along with it and hadn’t really realised until recently that there is a choice and it doesn’t make me weak or wet, there are other ways to find out where your limits are and of course it’s not always entirely necessary to find out at all, if you have enough self worth and self value you don’t need to know how far you can push yourself, there’s nothing to prove. Of course it’s easy to go the other way and never do anything at all but thats a whole other conversation
I asked some old friends if i could stay with them, they seized the opportunity to go away and left me to house and cat sit, win win for everyone
I spent the last two days in Porto, a city I adore, the sun came out my deflated spirits were lifted and I spent a very pleasant afternoon sitting by the river eating cakes and chatting to an interesting chinese man
and then there’s Italy
a country I never wanted to go to, without going in to detail I went along for Rick, I bought the house there for Rick, I wanted Rick to recover from all the loss and as always I was only ever trying to do the right thing, the thing that felt right at the time.
I’d spent a lot of money on that house after Rick died, I probably shouldn’t have done, I didn’t really know what I was doing and then more death came along and I had to leave and then I went back in 2021 and spent more money on it, again because I didn’t really know what I was doing……..
There’s nothing wrong with Italy per se it’s a beautiful country on so many levels, but it wasn’t ever on my list of places to live but it was on Rick’s, he loved everything Italian and so if all the house was was an expensive place for him to die then thats what it was, Rick’s resting place but I couldn’t keep it anymore, it’s ok to have a shrine or a place where we visit our loved ones, but keeping an empty house in a foreign country for the sake of a cherished memory or worse because we feel guilty, is never a good reason, so even though the house had been on the market since 2021 and I’d dropped the price last year, the house sold, subject to contract last month, I couldn’t afford to travel to Italy to sign yet more papers but I managed it and had a fleeting 2 day visit in April
and last week a happy couple signed on the dotted lines
it’s come with a huge mixture of relief and sadness, a sadness that has utterly engulfed me and culminated in me having shingles and deep deep grief, I know it will pass and I know one day when Portugal finally sells to the right people, i will feel the same again maybe a lot more than this, Italy by comparison was a small chapter in our life together but possibly more poignant because Rick died there and it’s the place where I lost the rest of my little broken family almost in one fell swoop….
it was a place that afforded us hope, possibilities and new beginnings but in the end it was a place that offered endings, and maybe now that it is sold it will afford the beginning or finishing of this next project……
The Garden room
I’ve called it that because it is north facing and never ever gets any sun other than reflections and a tiny bit in the summer for five minutes, it was the dilapidated conservatory, it was a great dumping ground but was leaking more and more, I’d had various ridiculous quotes to re-build it and went back to my lovely original builder Dave
I haven’t bored you with too many buildy photos cos this post has gone on long enough and I’m surprised you’ve made it to the end……..I’ll continue in another post when the interior of this part of the house is done, goodness knows when that will be but thanks to the Italian saga coming to an end it might not be too long, arrivederci and all that