When I shared our big news last week, I mentioned that we’re trying to spend as much time as possible visiting family and friends this summer. We started with our wonderful trip to Harris at the end of June, and I said at the time it was one of the best weeks DorkySon had ever had. That remains true, but after the fortnight that we’ve just spent in the States I think we’ve got another holiday to add to the list of favourites. Continue reading
I learnt a new word this weekend. Diurach.
Diurach is the Gaelic name for someone from the Isle of Jura, and I was lucky enough to have three of them staying with me this weekend (although one of them – a friend who I have known for twenty-five years – is a Hearach like me. But Harris is happy to let Jura borrow her for a wee while…) Continue reading
I have not written about P before.
That is partly because I’m not confident that my words can do him justice.
But it’s also because loss can do funny things to people. It can make you claim a closeness that others don’t recognise, as you grapple with your own emotions and try to make sense of them.
I don’t want to do that.
There are others who knew P better than I did, so I’ve waited, because I didn’t want to speak on their behalf.
But he was my friend too, and now the time feels right.
“High school days are the best days of your lives…”
How often did you hear that nonsense line uttered when you were a teenager, eh?
Someone put a picture up on Facebook the other day of a staff photo from my former high school. According to the silver lettering embossed on the frame, it’s from 1999. I would have been sixteen at the time, and these were the teachers I saw every single day, week in, and week out.
I am shocked by how few of them I remember.
There are two or three I am still in touch with – friends of my parents, or parents of my friends – who I could comfortably stand in the street and make conversation with. There are probably another dozen or so who I either liked or disliked a lot, and their names are still easy enough to call up in my mind.
But then there’s the rest. A nameless mass of smiles and suits, made up of individuals who may or may not have once stood before me in a classroom and imparted their knowledge on noble gases, imperfect participles, and quadratic equations.
Back in December I did a Live in the Now post, for the first time in months, where I took some time to just look around at our life and reflect on where we all are. I’m going to try and keep that going throughout 2013, as a way of remembering the little things that don’t really warrant a post to themselves. Continue reading
Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 