Author: Alison

The diet, that we were supposed to start two weeks ago, has taken several wrong turns. It all started on day 1, when daughter 1 decided to break her own rules and bake chocolate brownies and granola.

On day 2, daughter 3 wanted to bake cookies for a friend’s birthday. I hesitated. They’re not for us, she pointed out, so I relented, but only after insisting that she baked a few extra – for us. By day 5 I was actually ringing daughter 1 on my way home from work, asking her if she fancied making a cake. That was last week. Then Harry went missing and all thoughts of a diet went missing with him. I think it’s called cake and wine therapy, or something like that. Since we found out that Harry’s spirit had been set free, we have had many lovely messages of love and sorrow and a cake given to us – a whole, yummy anti-diet cake. More therapy. This isn’t Weight Watchers, this is Cake Watchers and I’ve got the non-slimmer of the week award! When I got in from work tonight, I allowed myself a slither. Then it needed tidying up, so I did that. Then I had another slither, because it’s only a slither. Within 5 minutes I’d slithered the hell out of that cake. Partner came home and went to cut himself a piece. Woah! Where’s all the cake gone? he asked. I felt guilty, as it was mostly his and Harry’s cake, so I blamed dog 2. I shamelessly said that dog 2 had licked the cake and that I’d had to cut a large slice off it and thrown it away. What a waste! I exclaimed for effect. He looked at me suspiciously. You’ve got icing on your chin, he said. Damn, I thought. I bet Harry’s having a right laugh at this.

I sat down at my computer, telling myself that I must get a grip on this diet at some point. My bikini bod must be ready by the end of August. I reassured myself that there’s plenty of time. I looked at my e mails, there was one from Tumblr. I’ve heard of Tumblr, but I’m like an old person when it comes to all this shit, so wasn’t sure what it was about. I opened it and the subject read: Account notice: Your username needs attention. Hmm, strange I thought. I don’t have an account with Tumblr and then I read the e mail:

At first, I couldn’t read the long word and I read it something like: humon gous peng dreamer. Wtf? Then I reread it out to partner and I realised what it said: humongous penguin dreamer.

Well, I thought to myself. I’ve been referred to by a few names in my 45 years of life, but never a fat dreamy penguin.

I carried on reading down the e mail: if you’re still interested in using the username humongouspenguindreamer, just hit this button. There it was, as clear as anything. Highlighted in blue; calling me to just hit it. Goading me to agree to the name: I’m still a humongouspenguindreamer. And you know what, I almost hit that button, as the way the past two weeks have gone a fat, dreamy bird pretty much sums up how I’m feeling.

As many of you will be aware, partner’s cousin Harry is no longer with us, but his spirit lives on. When he was missing, everyone was upset and when you are upset, different rules seem to creep in to your life. Some of these are good rules, like I can’t be fecking bothered to get worked up about my ex. There’s never any point in this anyway, so this is a step forward – thanks to Harry. Other things, however, got lax. For example, I didn’t seem to have that voice in my head, that tells me to stop hunting in the cupboards for cake. That voice was now telling me that it is fine to look for cake, eat all the bloody cake you want, because of Harry. The other morning the girls were taking conversational lumps out of each other. Rather than calming the situation down, (only for the neighbour’s sake), I just sloped back upstairs, to think about Harry. They’re just tired, I told partner, and they are worried about Harry.
Now Harry is gone, but of course he is continuing to affect our lives minute by minute. His calm, tender, intelligent spirit is touching us: the sun seems even brighter today, because of Harry. I am noticing every beautiful line and curve on partner’s face, because of Harry. I’m feeling other people’s warmth more intensely, because of Harry.
I kiss partner’s trembling bottom lip as I go off to work. I would rather life stopped for a moment so that I can hug him and cry and talk about what’s happened and feel upset that it’s one of the good guys that has gone and not one of the shitheads who walk on this earth, but life goes on. I have 13 3 and 4 year olds waiting and baying for my Taekwon-do instructor blood and they don’t give a crap about some bloke called Harry. We’ll open a bottle of wine tonight, partner says. I look at him with that, ‘on a Wednesday?’ look and then I say, ‘sure’, because of Harry.
The huge, aching hole that Harry’s death has left me with fills up with tears like a well. I have a feeling, however, that Harry’s spirit will use that water in the well to grow some bloody amazing veg and some other sustainable food sources that we can all eat and as we’re munching on a huge courgette, we’ll say that the world is still a better place, because of Harry.

A wet and wild walk with Harry and his Uncle Rob

Harry planting and watering those courgettes

Forgive me, but I’m a bit distracted at the moment…well, actually a lot. Partner’s cousin, Harry, has gone missing in Peru. He went for a trek alone in the mountains nearly 2 weeks ago and hasn’t yet returned. I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless and out of control and so I thought that writing about it might help. I thought that if I tell you all what an amazing person he is, it will be a positive use of the time spent waiting. Waiting is awful. The only good thing that comes from waiting is that it gives you perspective, as you have the time to think about what really matters to you, but most importantly – what doesn’t. You have no head space to let things wind you up and so you let them go. Some of the things I have let go of the past few days, I never want back, even when Harry returns.

I’ve known Harry for 6 years and he and his family have made a huge impact on my life. None of them will know this, because of course, we don’t talk about such positive things, until shit happens. Of course we don’t tell people how inspirational we find them. How we think that they are simply one of a kind and that they hold values that I would like to hold, but don’t. How often do we tell each other these things? We tell partners and children that we love them, but have you told your best friend how impressed you are with her for the way she handles her life, or your brother or your neighbour or the cashier who you see regularly at the supermarket how friendly and positive she is…do you tell her? Sometimes, but quite often, do you not think that we go through life thinking these positive things about one another, but only really expressing them when they have gone away.

I am hoping with every aching bone in my body that Harry is just lost. That he is wandering like a nomad and that any second now, he will wander back to his group of friends in Pisac, as the helicopter looks down on him, his family who have flown out hug and berate him and the thousands of people who are on line, awaiting his return breathe a huge sigh of relief. I hope that before I post this, he is back. The world is a better place with Harry in it. I have read this many times in Facebook comments over the past few days.

I know that many of you reading this do not know who this Harry is, so please let me indulge in telling you a bit about him, because he really is unique. To quote from, ‘The Search for Harry’ Facebook page: Harry is one of the most loveliest men you could ever wish to meet and be friends with. He is an extremely genuine and caring person who acts from his heart and with pure integrity. He cares for people and he cares for our earth. Harry is a very-skilled furniture maker and promotes to transform the world by embracing permaculture and writing life-inspiring poems. He has been sharing his gifts and skills generously and he is dearly loved and respected in his vast community and network of friends and family.

I cannot even begin to contemplate the enormity of the search in the 20 square miles of high altitude mountainous lake terrain. My thoughts are with his parents Sarah and Simon, his sister Ellen, all his family and those amazing people who are involved in the search.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

I’m hoping, Harry, that, as one of your friends put on Facebook, you are being fattened up by a Peruvian lady of the mountains and when you leave, you will find your way home.

Partner and I suddenly found ourselves with a day…a whole cheeky day when we could sneak out somewhere. We chose Brighton…in the pissing rain! We nearly got thwarted by the price of a train ticket – how much?!! Partner spat out his tea. Well, let’s make the most of it and go to Brighton and get pissed, just like people do when they sneak out and do something. He wasn’t convinced, as he knew that by ‘pissed’ I meant a pint at lunchtime, but the lure of the seaside cracked even the hardest of nuts.

We arrived in time for an injection of coffee and I found us a cute looking cafe, out of the rain (that just happened to only have young men serving). It’s a bit gloomy in here, partner said. Well, I replied, smiling at a man in a pinny, it’s what you make of it.

Coffee fuelled, we were ready to shop. When I’m trying to sell a day out to partner, I refer to shopping as, ‘mooching’ and he seems to accept that (sucker!) What I actually mean is hitting the shops like a whirling dervish, who spends most of her life in a dobok (Taekwon-do outfit) and who lives in a town where her most exciting shop is Waitrose – there’s no stopping me. Shop number 1 – I find an item I wish to purchase, at the huge cost of £6.99 (sarcasm). I’ll google that, partner says. I bet it’s cheaper online. I didn’t know whether to humour him or to hit him – so I just took the piss out of him, hoping he would see the error of his comment. I found another item and yet again he mentioned Google. Ok, I said. This is serious. Either you ditch your google fantasy or I ditch you as my mooching partner. This isn’t what I call mooching, he wailed!

We move onto another shop. I overhear the shop assistant closing her sale: shopper as she receives her bagged item, “thanks very much”. Shop assistant’s reply, “no drama”. (She was a Kiwi. I love Kiwis). That is how you need to approach our shopping trips, I say to partner: no drama!

A photo taken on our dog walk, the morning of the 12th April. The morning that we heard the first cuckoo of spring.

I’d never given cuckoos a second thought, until two days ago and there it was, clear as a bell and beautiful as a song (not Bieber or such like, more Beethoven). Listen! Partner said. I thought he was just bored with my conversation – the (almost) 7 year itch and all that. That’s a cuckoo! And so it was. We thought it was significant – something about the official start of Spring. I got home and googled it.

Apparently, on hearing the first cuckoo in spring it is traditional to pen a letter to The Times, so I’m penning a blog to you instead. Perhaps I should have written a letter to the Times as well – it’s on my bucket list to get one published (saddo). According to peeps in the know, hearing the first cuckoo of spring has long been cause for celebration, although ironically the call states the descending minor third, musically always seen as fairly ‘sad’.

I have to say, that sad is how I felt when I got home and decided that it was time to expose my garden, dogs and nosey neighbours, to my legs. Why, ‘sad’, I’m hearing you cry…Sad that the sun is shining? Or sad that the body is still in ‘winter body’ state and has not yet made the transition to ‘summer body’? (This is not being helped by daughters, who keep breaking the rules and baking treats – haven’t they heard the cuckoo sing: cuck-oo, cuck-oo, no cakes, for you?) No! None of the above. Sad, because when I rolled my trousers up there was a bloody forest where my lower limbs should be! Sad, because I now have to embrace the cuckoo – you can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore the signs – I heard it with my own ears: cuck-oo, cuck-oo, more work, for you!

Yes, my friends, listen up! The cuckoo has spoken. Razors at the ready, slap on the fake tan, find the exercise bike from under the clothes: Summer is officially on it’s way!