Beginnings and endings

A couple of nights before I left New Zealand on my big adventure I was having dinner with my brother and his wife. For dessert we had tiny pastry cases made of filo filled with raspberry sorbet which were so delicious they became addictive. We began to consider what else would go well in them and the suggestions ranged from chocolate to Christmas fruit mince, smoked salmon to salsa. The idea of a blog was on my mind and the thought came that a variety of tasty morsels was what I hoped to share with my readers so I have adopted the name of the cases. I hope the manufacturer will take this as free publicity and not an attempt to usurp their name!

For weeks before I left friends and colleagues were asking me if I was excited about my trip (which I'll talk about more a little later). I couldn't give them the answer they were looking for and excused it by saying how stressed I was by all the things (and there was a long, long list!) I had to do before I left. They were understanding but I wasn't satisfied that that was the real reason and not long before I left I realised it was because I was spending my energies on leaving and wasn't yet ready to look forward.

To most people it seemed I was taking six months leave without pay to have a working holiday in the UK and the prospect of going away and having a break from routine was appealing to them. My close friends knew that my trip was the fulfilment of a commitment my now ex-partner and I had made when we returned from Europe two years ago, so was somewhat bitter-sweet. What I found was happening to me is that I was reconciling and often closing many highly significant episodes in my life.

The most obvious was the end of my sixteen-year partnership with the man I had thought I would spend the rest of my life with - I'm still walking that path and it's not for publication yet. But I found myself reconsidering my previous 19-year marriage and its demise; the death of my mother and then of my father; the last eighteen months of living (mostly) on my own - the longest I have ever done so; my career, or lack of one... you get the picture. So for the last few months I have been looking over my shoulder, not forward to my adventure, not until now, eight hours before I leave Singapore for London.