"Ah-ha!" moments continue to pop up. I had one yesterday as I rode eleven kilometres on an old sit-up-and-beg bike with only one functioning gear to a shop on the outskirts of Palma to get the rest of its gears working. It was downhill most of the way (I took the bus home 🤣), hence the arrival of random thoughts.

Montreal and Costa Rica together took up eight months of my untethered year. A full 50%. At the beginning, it was difficult to know how everything was going to unfold, even to know what I was doing, and it's only now, in hindsight, looking back from the home stretch, that I wonder why I was trying to reclaim the happiness and fun in locations from my past. I was so determined to find my place. Perhaps I hoped that if I insisted and forced and tried different tools, I could make this square peg fit into that round hole.

Montreal is a truly fabulous city, but I'm not ready to return to Canada. And no matter how happy I was in Costa Rica, it holds memories from the start of a marriage when we were young, foolhardy, able to overcome any and all obstacles in a new culture with a new language. We created our family there.

I could never match or recreate the equivalent of my time there, and to just settle because it "was fine" isn't enough.

Don't get me wrong. My past is worth celebrating. It was filled with love and adventure, the excitement of new babies, new countries, work, play and friends. But I am a different person now, without a partner, my girls far-flung, and in the enviable position of being able to choose what comes next.

So Switzerland rocked my boat rather than Spain, Portugal or France. It's a country that holds no past memories for me. And while I realise that of course I could be content creating a new life in a former home, my adventurous spirit clambers for change. Actually, it's more than that. It's that I have changed and in returning to old haunts I slip back into old habit patterns. Over the five weeks in Switzerland, traveling around Geneva, Nyon, Lausanne and beyond, I had stimulating conversations, improved my French, wrote, read, went to a writing conference, explored the history and, most importantly, saw growth and opportunity there for me. I felt utterly content all the time, in spite of near-constant rain, which says a lot.

London, even with its personal history, also works for me. London is where I came into my own. So even though it holds difficult memories of a frequently-absent husband and the end of a marriage, it is also a place that has great community, and now, with my acceptance to study at university, a purpose.

Another recent ah-ha! moment, whilst I was still in Switzerland: certain aspects of my past perplex me, the divorce in particular as it never occurred to me that we wouldn't do what was necessary to knit our marriage back together (is there a parallel here with my recent searches for a base? I don't think so as I believe it is possible to reconnect with people, although both parties have to want it; I see it with friendships). Anyway, I digress. I find it unhelpful to be surrounded by memories of my past. Which is why my creative writing, not this blog or my journal, from this past year has been filed. I am looking forward now, with new ideas.

I may have contradicted myself in this writing but that's just a sign of the freshness of these thoughts, the skin of the split cocoon still soft and glistening in the gentle Mediterranean light.

I still have three weeks left, though, before I reach the end of up my untethered travels. Three weeks more in Europe before I head to Toronto to meet my mother and continue on to Australia for Christmas. So I will not leap ahead of myself but remain here, alive and present, in my beautiful guest home in the hills outside the village of Puigpunyent in Mallorca, Spain.

In the morning, after the sun has finally shown its face, I fling open the door and windows to let in the light, the warmth, the birdsong. I can hear the occasional donkey braying, a rooster, the church bells in the distance. I make myself a cup of tea and watch the wind move through the olive trees below me in the valley.

Yes, this is pretty awesome.

I have such exciting news that I've been meaning to share but I get distracted by outings and events and life.

For instance, one evening I went into Nyon to practise my French by watching a film. Instead I got an eyeful of beautiful young girls, religion, torrential storms, surging rivers, trance, suicide, nudity, exorcism, many close-ups of insects and raindrops, and even a daylight meadow scene with the teenage protagonist lying naked with three nubile young men. Very little dialogue though. I suppose the French can't help themselves (although technically it was Swiss). I enjoyed it even while smiling inwardly.

And then there's the rain. I am in awe of the quantity of water that can fall from the skies. Often there is no sign of the mountains surrounding me, or the lake. Just cloud. There have been only two days in the past three weeks when it hasn't rained. And it's proper rain. I mean, not Costa Rican tropical rain, of course, but hours of steady rain, day and night, relentless. The kind usually attributed to England. Let me tell you, fifteen years in London and I have never seen such consistent rain.

A million euros!

But I don't care because I'm having such a delicious time in Switzerland with its history, markets, efficient trains, gem fairs, sweeping landscapes with dramatic clouds, chocolate, a weekend-long writing conference, even the films, and, of course, my delightful young housemate. Same age as my girls.

I haven't said much about him in my Swiss posts as it feels like an invasion of his privacy, but he's worth mentioning as we have a lovely time together when our paths cross. For example, one evening we started with how Aristophanes made playful aspersions on Plato's thoughts - he compared the gods' pontificating to a windful of farts - and moved on to Rome vs Greece (why do we have to choose sides?) and whether Jesus existed. We've discussed wine, chocolate and the challenges of queer culture in Switzerland. At one point, my housemate tied in the mega-churches of the US to the use of Christianity as a force for government, and we've also covered politics, the history of the area, schooling and of course gemmology. He did an apprenticeship and now works on the creative side in the atelier of a top jeweller in Geneva. He is a joy to be around.

I'm barrelling towards the end of my time in Switzerland, so am rushing to do all the things that I haven't quite got around to: the large marché aux puces (flea market) in Place Plainpalais in Geneva, Lausanne and its night watchman (although I believe it's a woman at the moment), Bern is a possibility but definitely Montreux with its connection to Freddy Mercury, a cog train up the mountain and Chateau Chillon on the lake. Plus, if I'm lucky, maybe a couple more decent hikes. Potentially in snow. In the mountains, it won't have been rain falling all this time.

But the point of this post, and the big news which I've finally got around to, is that I have found my what. In January I will return to do a Foundation course at Regent's University in London in Psycho-therapy, with the plan to continue onto a Masters in Psychology in September. Of course, this does involve London in January, which had never been my plan, but that's okay. Weather is irrelevant when life has purpose. 

First, though, I will fill my suitcase with chocolate and head to Mallorca for a few weeks.

The chocolate aisle at my local supermarket