I like pathways or skinny roads which disappear beyond my vision because they invite me on. I like conversations which tail off in the face of interruption. I like the look on someone’s face when there is no chance of finding out more. I like chance encounters at a coffee kiosk, on a walk, in a shop doorway, in a luggage collision in an airport, when faces tell me so much and voices tell me little, if anything. I remember, as a child, hearing words from older mouths and looking up into faces to see something which made me suddenly unsure. I had no language to explain it, even to myself and, chances are I just skipped on as little girls do, but now it thinks me. What I saw when I did look up were the scars of life, the lines of worry and the brilliance of learned concealment. I have them on my own old face but instead of giving me issue or a rush towards an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon, I love them because they invite me on. To look further. Where will I go now? Where do I lead myself? What does that twisty spindrift of a barely drivable road lead next? I am still curious like Alice.

I like the seasons, the way they take for fricken ever to arrive as if not one of them has ever learned to be assertive. We, down here, winkle our landlife through indecision for weeks, cardy on, cardy off, thermals needed one day, becoming a fitted boiler without thermostat the next. Windows open until they slam shut in the fist of a gale. A clear blue inviting a gentle walk until, not quite half-way through, the sky closes in a grey whooha and a million clouds dump their load as if they had held on far too long.

I like the way the islanders respond to all of these things. I met the same acceptance in the 70’s among the wonderful men and women who worked at Church Farm in Martham. I had never, till then, met truth from mouths which connected with the expression on a face. I remember a light in my heart then. Here are people I understand, even though I was the farmer’s wife and they were workers, it didn’t matter. I could see where that disappearing road lead. Here, in my island life, there is a shrug, a nonchalance, an acceptance in pretty much everything and yet with a curiosity, a mischievous challenge, a ‘let’s go’ thing.

When we are born into a family, there are plans made for us before we can piss straight. This is normal and everyone does this, including me and himself, even though every single baby proved enough for a dissertation. As new parents always believe they hold the reins, and they do, for a short while, even as a new and often uncomfortably independent spirit is born with every child. This can prove awkward, even embarrassing. Oh, we all know of teenage angst, of hormonal turbulence and think, as we laugh through it all around a table with parents going through the same thing, that it will pass, the whatever of the whatever of it. It may not.

I, for one, found my way. I say nothing against my parents, my loving safety, their patient opportunities for furtherance. I was loved. But I always longed for escape, to follow the disappearing road. I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the million miles between words and truth, perhaps the carefully defined road connections, the marked out parking spots, the rules of controlled living. I live no longer under any controls although I find my own both severe and opportunistic as if I have to choose. Ok, I will. I accept the severe, the self-judgement, the list of my crimes and failures.

I still love that sleek and slim disappearing road.