This day they moved, left the island, all girls and hair swinging and a big moving van and hopes dancing in the headlights of the car, skittering before them, lifting the road like ribbons of light, dancers. I stay here, solid, porridge. No, frollocks to that. I wave them off, I am strong, weak, old, young, lost, found, me, me always me and now it is just me in a very big me sort of way. Everyone is somewhere else living their own lives and the Familiar shifts yet again.

I remember all the times when the Familiar turned her cloak and swished away, leaving a big scoop of nothing, a potential fall, a gouge into well-known footland, a fall threat. I have damned her for decades and yet, and yet, she is my guide, if not, quite, my friend. I see her eyebrows beetle at that, her eyes slant up and to the right, a sardonic question. She is slanty at best. There were the times I realised that my wifely role was already written up as script. It was a freedom for a while, a confidence, a familiar. Each change uncomfortabled me. My children leaving home, one, two, three, four, five. Each time a fist-wringing farewell to the familiar.

I have no smart answer to this. Letting go is easy to say but not to do, not to live out. So what is the living out bit? It is, to my mind, the ordinary. The get-up, eat-breakfast, stack-wood, walk-dog, clean-bathroom, wash-clothes, wipe-surfaces ordinary of life and although it may feel very off-pissing and my fed may be up on hide legs and yapping, it seems to be the best way to skid into some sort of rainbow thinking. I want dancers in my headlights, hope in my loss, laughter at the foot of my mountain. Does anyone else see my mountain?

That’s a no, then.