Past, present and future.

It's been a busy busy few weeks since my last blog.

It's now November, the Husband is back from his month long Australia trip.  He's full of ideas and excitement, as well as complaints about the cold here.

I'm also back from a trip to Greece where I stayed with cousins for the first week and then the Husband joined me for a little 'us' time in Thessaloniki.

Whilst in Greece I visited Delphi which is something i've wanted to do ever since I was a Latin/Classics pupil at school and we were told all about the Pythia and Oracle.  This interest then increased when studying English Lit at college and the inspiring Mr Judge told me to read the Double Tongue, a previously unpublished draft of a novel by William Golding.  I recommend it.

The ancient site is beautiful, peaceful and immense in scale when you consider when it was built.  It's one of the few ancient sites i've visited where I could actually rebuild the monuments in my mind and see what it would have looked like.  There's nothing more anticlimactic than visiting somewhere like that and just seeing piles of stones and not being inspired.

As we walked past the temples and treasuries there was the sound of an eagle overhead in the icy blue sky and pine tree gum scents hung around everywhere.  There were also annoying Russian kids running about everywhere so it wasn't perfect...

As I was walking up the hill, my right leg gave way slightly.  The nerve damage seems to be worse on the right and it lets me know when it's tired.  I have a feeling that's going to be a permanent reminder but I can cope with that.  As I mentioned above, reminders such as those about teachers, books, friends, places are what we have to inspire us and whilst I want to move on from this episode in my life as soon as I can, I still think I need to remember it and what it has taught me.

I can't say that I stared death in the face and beat it or anything as dramatic as that because I caught the illness early and it was treated effectively straight away.  But I can say that once, and only once, I opened that door in my mind onto what might happen and stumbled into that dark chamber much like the Pythia.  I didn't stay there for long because the noise was too loud but I didn't need anyone to interpret what I heard and I will remember that oracle.

To make my point though, I did it. I stood there on that hillside in Greece, having given the Russian kids my best Paddington stare to shut them up.  I saw my past, my present and there was a future.