Bowling out

I woke up with a cat nuzzling/clawing me, absolutely not refreshed but earlier than expected. Hannah was on hand to remind me that the clocks had gone back. ‘Nobody needs another hour of 2020’, she added. And she is correct.

I was already here in the UK before the weekend in March when the clocks moved forward. Seven and a half months and it’s getting tired. Two years ago to the day I left Cambridge for Mozambique. Now I find myself shipping out of Heidi’s house and heading to my parents for a few days whilst I ponder my next move. As I had hoped to arrange my return to Mozambique in October, we’d agreed that Heidi would need to find a replacement cat- and housesitter. It wasn’t fair on her that I could only answer questions about my visa progress with ‘no idea whatsoever.’ So we picked a date and Maria from Spain has now arrived and will take care of things superbly from here.

Coming back to Staffordshire feels like a regression to 2001 but this time with all my possessions either in friends’ lofts in Cambridge, under a desk in the office, or in Southern Africa. Things looked up on arrival in my sister’s kitchen, a few miles outside the Stoke-on-Trent Tier 2 boundary. She scattered us around the kitchen and we took turns demolishing the vast picnic themed spread she’d prepared. As a replacement birthday meal (the restaurant my parents had booked for her is in Cheshire so became restricted) the girl did marvellously. Quiche, chicken bites, cheese and pineapple on sticks. So, 2001 but with some 1980s thrown in.

The bowling lawn and house on Christ’s Pieces were quiet and autumnal this morning as I completed the final logistical pieces before leaving Heidi’s.