A ramble

What do I do with an entire evening in? After a hectic week running about meeting up with friends, and before that two months at a research station where we all lived on top of each other in a big convivial marine biologist mess, it feels rather odd to be reading quietly in my room for a couple of hours. But as the rest of the week looks jam packed with events I am telling myself to savour it while it lasts.

The weekend was chilled out (by recent standards -- all relative) and really rather lovely. I got a dose of creativity in rehearsal for a new piece and in putting soft pencil to paper again for the first time in years, helped prop up the economy by buying new boots (woo, shoes, I am such a girl sometimes -- and they're not even heels), saw a film and had lovely meals with good friends, helped celebrate my sister's birthday in London where the food was tasty and the company wonderful fun, and even -- very surprising this one -- did some work. A pretty wonderful two days. It is all about appreciating life as it comes, I think. I'm glad to remember how lovely life here can be as well, it assuages the pain of no longer being on our beach with the boats bobbing out front and the blue sky melting into bluer sea and.. oh, I mustn't think of it too much!

But --

The beauty of Lizard is ridiculous, a piercingly bright compelling paradise almost-unreal kick-yourself beauty that I never really got used to despite 10 months of living there. Being out in the environment day in and day out makes you appreciate it that much more -- the island has its moods, from gently overcast grey over a glassy sea to proper tropical storms and 2 metres swell to the tropical paradise of the photographs and postcards. Best appreciated either on the 10-20 minute daily "commute" on the boat out to the study site, the world quiet except for your outboard and you; or on a day off, on a late afternoon wander down our beach to the rocks at the end, where at low tide you can get round to this great big expanse of flat rock where you can lie down and feel the day's warmth coming back up from the rock to your back, and it feels like there's no one between you and the end of the world. If it is possible to fall in love with an island I lost my heart to Lizard a while ago.

I shall have to somehow someday engineer Lizard Island Pt IV -- some loves have to be pursued apparently (particularly when they are made largely of granite and calcium carbonate).

What an odd entry! I shall post now and hope not to regret later. :)