Wind swept

Four days camping in Pembroke attempting to climb sea cliffs have just been and gone.  For we love royalty and the generosity in sharing a double bank holiday.  The mountain hardware refuge tent decided to accompany me for the trip.  That once much detested piece of equipment has worked its way somewhat sneakily into my heart.  And learning to finally love this tent is, for me, symbolic of learning to love me; to do more than accept those times of solitude, but to simply enjoy whatever experience comes along.  I can love that space, the feeling of smallness I have there.  My thermorest taking up only a fraction of the greedy space, and me in turn taking up just a portion of the mat.  Because  I feel small here, small and curled up in the ultimate friendly space.  The tent itself tiny at the edge of the field and the field just a part of the patchwork of agricultural land that spreads across Britain.   Yet here, in this infinite space, where I am small to the point of insignificance, I am also huge.  Because my thoughts fill my body but they also expand and soar, without boundaries, and without limits and there is nowhere that isn't home.  And this is why it will be OK to travel alone.

But I'm not in Pembroke alone.  I have a driver.  Who is also my lead climber, my teacher, my mentor and someone who I'd be honoured to feel I could finally think of as friend.  Because it remains a new and raw acquaintance.  And it's two people who find we can talk of anything, and we share the kind of conversation I seldom share outside my head.  And the joy here is that I am no longer restrained to just one perspective.  Ideas bounce, together we twist subjects, we both change and we both build on ideas which are curling like smoke in our heads.  Concepts come from each other and jostle and nestle up to pre-existing ideas, turning them into something new.  And if he would just stop attempting to kill me, maybe we could be friends.

He has an infectious enthusiasm somehow incongruous with a 6 foot 5 man near to 50 with a brain the size of a small planet, and makes sea cliff climbing an awesome experience I'm privileged to have shared.  And when I'm in a less whimsical mood I'll explain further.

Until then, I want my love, my joy, my laugh, my smile, my needs.  Not in the star signs or the palm that she reads.  Courtesy of Beautiful South.