I have half a dozen drafts of blog posts scattered across my desktop. Perhaps I want to create too neat of a package, my experiences and feelings all laid out in an interesting narrative with funny anecdotes and a satisfactory ending. An ending that explains how this year of discovery will end.

How ridiculous is that? And what kind of pressure am I putting on myself? 

I don’t have any conclusions, I’m just having fun.

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I have to say that it’s easy being back here in the UK. I’m not staying in my beautiful home on the river – that has lovely tenants in it paying a hefty rent which funds this year of exploration - but nearby, in the guest room of an amazing artist friend who is mostly away settling into an historic flat she’s bought that overlooks the sea. 

I love the more permissive libertarian culture here – dogs are well-behaved and off-lead, people park their cars in either direction, you can ride a bike through the greens and along the riverside, drink in parks and outside the pubs. It’s almost expected you’ll jay-walk. 

I have enjoyed a full and fabulous social schedule which is only calming down now, exactly a month since my arrival back on these shores. My novelty factor is likely wearing off, plus it’s summer so people go away. I’ve seen films and shared coffees, enjoyed dinners both out and at friends’ houses, I’ve been to yoga classes, cathedrals, museums and medical appointments, as well as the more mundane meetings with the various tax and financial people necessary to keep my world turning.

Reconnecting with my friends has been soul-warming. Many of them are not English, unsurprising for London, and I find them intelligent, mildly eccentric, and fun.

Being out every evening is the extreme opposite to my life in Montreal, where I had much more time for reading and writing. This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy Montreal. In fact, I loved it, but likely I wouldn’t have the awareness I have now without that time for introspection and consideration. Maybe that’s why I’m so enjoying the connection I have with people here, and understand better how the concentric circles of friendships work together rather than in competition. Absence and awareness create growth. 

To resolve my analogy from a few posts ago, it’s been a comfortable sweater rather than an outgrown blazer.

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Every weekend I’ve been somewhere. That curiosity that I developed over the last ten months is better established, and it’s enjoyable to apply this growth mindset to my home turf. Somehow it feels more robust. Like finding hidden drawers in old pieces of furniture that have sat in the corner of the room for years. This exploration feel quite personal, with less uncertainty and more satisfaction.

I’ve been west (Wiltshire to the wedding), east (Ramsgate), south (Brighton) and north twice (first to the Midlands to spend a weekend with my cousin, and then farther north to Yorkshire to hike on my own and with Justine). The highlight has been the public footpaths that crisscross England. I explored some in the Yorkshire Dales: two decent hikes on my own, then a long 20-km one with Justine. We weaved through sheep-filled fields, over stiles of stone or wood, walked on stepping stones across becks, and followed almost unseeable paths through ferns growing at chin height. It was glorious. If we’d attempted anything like this in the US we would have been shot at dozens of times as we skirted farm buildings, crossed people’s driveways and even went through the back garden of one house. 

I was so happy that I started to whistle, only to find I couldn’t. I kept trying for ages while Justine continued to show me how well she could do it. Perhaps she hoped her expertise would jump start my ability, likely she was just showing off. Weirdly, once back in London I could whistle just fine, although my cheeks get tired. 

My time in Yorkshire was a reminder of how important nature is to me. I need solitude. I crave green fields, trees and space. I hadn’t realised how edgy so much urban time had made me until I wandered out amongst the sheep and felt such joy sweep over me. Just as I had done in Santa Ana back in the winter months, I spun in a circle, arms outstretched, not wanting to be anywhere else, content in myself.

This happiness that I feel in both urban and rural or wild settings make me realise that I am quite at ease being nomadic. Perhaps kicking myself out of my nest, out of my comfort zone, to figure out where my home was, taught me that home is sometimes a concept and not a place. And maybe I will always be on a quest, albeit one without a grail, holy or otherwise. Life isn’t a matter of finding answers but asking the right questions. 

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I stood halfway across a bridge in central London one recent evening. The sun had set although the sky was still glowing in the west, and I stared downriver, towards London Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the crazy hodgepodge of oddly-named buildings like the Shard and the Cheese-grater and the Gherkin. It felt timeless and sobering. A reminder that we are here for only a blink of time, and that life will continue much the same once we are gone, with throngs of tourists taking selfies, the homeless begging for change. A man stares at his phone as he walks, his leather shoes pointy and worn, there is the chatter of young women heading to their trains after post-work drinks, a couple next to me embrace unselfconsciously. The very stones of this city have experienced the passage of generations.

That feeling reminds me of words written in a post-wedding email I received recently. “The faded patches of grass where the marquee once stood.” There’s a poignancy to that image. Sadness that such a beautiful event, the culmination of months of work, a well-enjoyed celebration and a milestone in the timeline of the bride and groom, is over and relegated to memories now. Yet to have lived and enjoyed such a momentous occasion – one would never wish that away. The grass may be faded, time may be passing, but oh, how glorious it was!

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What is in the air these days? Are the planets aligning in a certain way? Perhaps it’s the Summer Solstice, which happens at any moment. Whatever it is, there I was, threading my way through the platform crowds of Waterloo station having just arrived in from Salisbury and that fabulous wedding (more on that below), aiming for the one turnstile exit that fits suitcases. The exit that blocks up because the tickets never scan and the official helping out keeps getting asked for directions by tourists on the other side. The woman in front of me turns to, well I don’t know, maybe apologise for the delay in that British way, as if it’s her fault, or to share a grimace at the faff, and oh my god, we know each other. From my early days in Costa Rica… 30 years ago.

We were both speechless, literally, with disbelief and incredulity. It took a few minutes for us to get some words out, and then we went for coffee. I met Lydia pre-children, up in the mountains of Costa Rica. She was 22 and living with her dad’s friends, learning Spanish. We laughed as we reminisced about the incredible night view from my house overlooking San José, about taking the dogs on walks in sodden, cow-filled pastures, and playing Super Mario on very basic video equipment until dawn one day. We caught up on other things, like travel and children and marriages and a divorce and work and, and, and… 

There’s obviously a hidden cosmic agenda in this, and we’ve decided to just ride with it. I’m going to see her in Switzerland in October.

Chance encounters or random decisions certainly set all our lives in motion down one path and then another, but serendipity is a real aligning of the stars. Or perhaps we’re just players in a giant chess tournament. Some omnipotent being shifts a pawn, cuts the bishop across the board and your knight is lost. It was a series of serendipitous moves that resulted in the paths of Juno and Gus crossing, in a kitchen, in London, seven years ago. Which in turn formed the framework for my untethered year as I needed to return here by a certain date to celebrate their wedding. 

And what a celebration it was. The first time I have ever been a Celebrant, but perhaps not the last. I worked hard on the words to emphasise their commitment, the importance of being kind, the merit in noticing, cherishing and strengthening their bond. Essentially, I wanted them to not make the same mistakes that I did, and yes, there were mistakes. But we learn from our mistakes, and through this year of self-discovery I’ve managed to put aside many of the regrets that I’ve dragged behind me for years. The divorce was not my fault, but I bear responsibility for the deterioration of the relationship. That’s my most recent learned wisdom.

The wedding took place in the garden of the home of the groom's parents in a small town in Wiltshire. It was idyllic. Chairs were laid out on the grass in rows flanking an aisle, we stood under a leafy arch to conduct the ceremony. After drinks and canapés, we strolled across a wooden bridge whose supports had been wound with greenery and fairy lights towards an enormous marquee set up on a sort of island, beyond which stretched meadows complete with sheep and cows. Idyllic, as I said. Bucolic.  

It didn’t even rain.

160 people sat at four long tables set with gypsophila, exquisite white, rosé and red wines, and a single Riedel wine glass each. Quality over quantity - my style of wedding. The food was delicious, the speeches were some of the most heart-felt, generous I've heard, and laughter, joyful shrieks and applause were scattered through the evening. The newly-married couple are an inspiration to others with their genuine abilities to connect, the love they show each other and the happiness they enjoy together. As a bonus, the dance floor didn’t empty until the music stopped at midnight. 

This is the third wedding within a year for me, and there is something heart-filling about these rituals. I am honoured to have played such an important role in the event. I feel complete. 

Me, after the ceremony!

I’ve been rather remiss on posting on this site. I mean, angst is more gripping, a confrontation or a massive misjudgement with consequences simply makes a better story than the rather contented phase I’ve been going through. 

The only thing I can come up with is the reaction from the older, French, agitated man in a red silk bathrobe after I inadvertently rang his doorbell at 4:30 one sunny afternoon. I had mistaken his place on the busy St. Denis road in Montreal for the edgy tattoo parlour where I hoped to get my navel piercing swapped out (see post from later March if this is news). I mean, okay, the sign was obvious when, looking in disbelief at me and his finger shaking in rage, he pointed it out to me. And perhaps I was interrupting something but if so, why answer the door?

Two famous residents of Montreal - one no longer with us, the other very much alive.

In my view, life is like a four-legged stool, with a leg each for health, wealth, community and purpose. Post-pandemic, my stool was a little wobbly, and I wanted to work on purpose and community, my what and where. Then a few weeks ago, after months of pressuring myself to choose my future base, I realised that the “what” is more relevant than the “where”. After all, if What I am doing is fulfilling, then the Where is really not terribly important, whereas if the What is absent, there is no way that the Where is going to be able to fill that hole. 

I’d been training my binoculars on the wrong thing.

Speaking of binoculars, I used a less-magnifying mirror to put on some mascara the other day and guess what? It was so much easier as I wasn’t trying to fine-tune each individual lash. I treated the row of eyelashes as one entity. There’s a metaphor in there – I should not get too stuck into the minutiae of life but be more receptive and curious to a wide range of things. 

So how will I feel as I head back to London this weekend for a couple of months, my gig as a wedding celebrant now less than two weeks away? To continue with the theme: I am quite content with my Who and my Why, and am now interested to see how the neighbourhood feels. Will it settle around me like a well-loved sweater? Or will it feel like an old school blazer – slightly itchy, tight around the shoulders because I’ve grown, and too redolent of the past?

I’ll keep you posted.

I’m quiet these days. I don’t feel as though I have many things to share. I read and think, write my thoughts in a journal, then balance that with exercise (more on that below) and social events when I can arrange them. Last evening, I joined two new acquaintances at an organised storytelling event. As in, the six stories were prepared, it wasn’t open mic.

To be honest, I found the hubbub staggering after possibly too much solitude, but other than the overwhelm of the crowd, and my being ill at ease at the beginning and then the interval, the storytelling itself was great. Funny, poignant, and all tied to “a song that changed my life”, the theme of the event. 

I spent the awkward break sitting alone, wondering if I had a song that changed my world, and decided that I didn’t. What I do have is music that marks specific moments of my life. Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, for instance, takes me to uncomfortable slow dances when I was twelve or so. A few years later, I remember talking to Robert, a tartan-trousered, safety-pin-pierced punk rocker about the Sex Pistols and the meaning of life while lying on the dewy grass in Mount Pleasant cemetery. 

University is Chaka Khan (thanks, Gaby) and Cat Stevens. A decade or so on, it is The Long Black Veil by the Chieftains, which I sang to my colicky newborns (yes, all three) in the wee hours as I walked circles through the kitchen, living room and dining room up in the mountains of Costa Rica. The lights of the city shining below, my exhaustion almost unfathomable now. And then there’s The Rose, by Bette Midler, which I think of as my divorce song. 

The evening was well worth it for the storytelling, and the thinking it provoked. Do I have a story that will get me up on stage one of these months?

I’ve taken up yoga again. “Finally,” some of you will say, while others might roll their eyes. Roll away, I say. I think I might be on to something. 

Modo Yoga, a welcoming studio around the corner filled with frighteningly-friendly millennials, a comfortable sofa area complete with an equally friendly dog, and a space that fits 40 people, is where I am doing Hot Yoga.

I imagined a room at sauna temperature, complete with steam, slippery mats and sweat everywhere as we flung ourselves through the postures. I mean, we do sweat. My t-shirt sticks to me not long after the second downward dog, but it isn’t unbearable. And while it’s a little fast for this aging body, I feel I manage to “flow” from pose to pose with reasonable grace. I don’t necessarily love it, but I love having done it. And my body is grateful.

Montreal is flirting with me, and I kind of like it. Last autumn was the showiest display of gorgeous leaf colours that people had seen in years. And now, it appears that spring is actually lingering rather than barrelling towards the high temperatures and higher humidity of summer. It was 5 degrees when I woke this morning, but the homes are insulated here, with double-glazed windows and doors that seal properly against the cold, unlike my gorgeous yet draughty home by the chilly Thames. By noon, it was 20 and I was over-heating when out walking a friend’s dog.

Will winter here ever tempt me? I am playing with the idea of a couple of weeks in the snow at the end of January, when I return from Australia with my mum. Hang on (my eyebrows lifting), that means going from 30 degrees to potentially -30 degrees. Scrap that idea, the 280 km Camino in Costa Rica that reaches more than 7,000 feet of altitude is somehow more appealing.

What else have I been doing? I went for a bike ride with Dori last week and we did 55 kms, a chunk of it along a lovely 16-km spit of land in the mighty St. Laurence river. The spit is so narrow that from the car-less road that runs the length of it we could see water on both sides, through the leafing-out trees with swooping birds and the occasional ground hog. How do these creatures end up so far from anywhere? I suppose they are just large rodents. 

As we rode, we ate a number of bugs - it’s the season for that - and by the end, my shoulders, butt and feet were complaining. But it was an excellent start to the season. When I hit London next month one of the first things I’ll do is haul my two bikes out of storage so that I have both easy transport and available exercise. 

Which reminds me – less than three weeks left here in Montreal. Best to get out and enjoy the city.

I watched a hockey game last night. No, not the English kind with curved…, oh, hang on. I already wrote that post. But I did watch a hockey game last night. I sat with friends on their sofa, enjoying the action on the large-screen tv, my feet up, chicken wings with blue cheese dip to eat and a beer in my hand. There was even a dog at my feet. In other words, a perfect evening with excellent hockey, except that the Leafs lost. This will likely be my last mention of hockey. 🏒😞 

I received a lot of positive feedback from my last post, and I do think that it flowed well, so I admit to feeling some pressure to spin out another well-written free-flowing chapter of my life here in Montreal. But I’m going to turn my back on that need for affirmation from others, and just do the best I can to express some of the thoughts and ideas spinning around my head.

Warning: it’s messy in there.

I feel an urge to write about the weather, which must be a legacy from all those years in the UK.  But it is so extraordinarily different here than London, even though they’re both temperate climates. This time last week we were in the throes of a miserable, cool, four-day inundation of steady rain. I wanted the chance to moan, but then the sun came out on Friday and summer arrived. 

Just like that, the mountain, which only a week ago was a large beige lump with a spiky crewcut of bare trees, became cloaked in a fuzz of green. Leaves unfurled, magnolias popped and people put on shorts and t-shirts. 

Montreal: 6th of April after an ice storm (above) vs 6th of May (below)

This post, in which I was going to weave together the ideas of rebirth and regrowth with the theme of a damp and fecund springtime, doesn’t work so well now that it’s 20 degrees and sunny. So while I’m tempted to skip over writing about the frustration I felt when I tried to apply that burgeoning growth rhetoric to myself, I won't. I am immersed in it. I have to not only acknowledge but embrace this messy middle of a long drawn-out transition. It doesn’t matter when it began and it’s irrelevant to focus on the end. Yeah, I got divorced; happens to a lot of people. And my girls are so far-flung they’re like destination children around which I can plan a whole holiday, but wow! it’s exciting to see what they’re doing. Now it’s time to pull on the threads of curiosity to see what comes next for me.

Why am I finding it so hard?

Don’t get me wrong. I do not expect sympathy in any way; I am fortunate to have the opportunity, the time, the health and the bank balance to follow an inquisitive path. But uncertainty has never been a comfortable bedfellow for me. I’m more goal-oriented. Give me a finish line and I cruise.

Introspective personal development, however, is far less measurable. 

I’ve been so focused on the where, as in, do I want to return to London to live? Is the draw I feel to Canada enough to settle here? And, looking around Montreal, is this it? The Plateau has great energy and character but it’s crowded with millennials and older people who have lived here their whole lives. Nothing wrong with that, but is this my community? 

Which is why I have to stop thinking of the where and to consider instead the what, maybe the how, because I could make it work here if I had purpose. Of course I could. And it might be a great combination with Costa Rica or Mexico as the winter abode.

I need to shift my mindset in order to consider the journey rather than the destination, to take notice of what is confirming my fixed beliefs, both personal and societal, and then toss out those that are holding me back.

I wish it was as easy as putting out the recycling.

It’s a little uncomfortable where I’m sitting but I’m okay with that. Discomfort brings change. As Justine put in the note she gave me to read on the plane last year, it would have been easy to stay put in my exquisite house on the Thames, to enjoy the neighbours, my friends, do more volunteer work, take classes. But it didn’t feel right. I was twitchy.

Change is hard, it takes focused work. And what I’m learning is that it’s more about asking the right questions than finding answers.  

So I'll leave you with a question: What feeds your vitality?

PS - here's a photo of me with Mads at her Rush University commencement ceremony last weekend. I'm so proud of her 💚

I watched a hockey game last night. No, not the English kind with curved sticks, grass and thick knees. The other kind, the Canadian kind with the scraping of skates on ice and the thump of bodies against the rink boards. Where an organ – an organ – gets the crowds going and the players drip sweat off their faces while the fans are bundled up, their breath visible in the cold of the arena.

Sometimes I feel a little schizophrenic, without meaning any disrespect to anyone reading this. I am so comfortable in an English setting, whether it be cycling over to the (free) National Gallery in London, placing a “flutter” at Ascot racecourse where I’m surrounded by men in top hats and glammed-up women in fascinators, or having a picnic with friends and their dogs on slightly-wet grass, an umbrella in one hand and tea that’s gone cold in the other. Discussing the weather is always on the agenda whether having lunch with your best friend or buying tomatoes at a market stall.

Yet the first twenty-five or so years of my life were spent here in Canada. I am Canadian in my soul. A conflicted one, to be sure. I don’t believe I could ever cope with a Montreal winter where the temperature can plummet to -25 for stretches of time, and the spring is almost non-existent compared to an endless, lovely English one (except this year. I think Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant is up to something.) 

Of course I’m a Canadian who has been influenced by time lived in France, Costa Rica and the UK; a Canadian who gave birth in Spanish, wrote a thesis in French and works with words in English. I’m not a normal Canadian, but in a country made up of people with global stories, this doesn’t make me unique. 

                                    

I returned to Canada last Wednesday to begin yet another experimental chapter. It’s a four-hour drive from Maine to Montreal, and I chose to spend the first ninety minutes of the drive without music, without radio, not even an audio book. I just looked in contented awe at the expanse of leafless trees, jagged peaks and snowmelt-fed rivers running next to the highway, their water surging over boulders and threatening the banks. 

Crossing the Samuel de Champlain bridge into Montreal proper, my phone ran out of juice. Of course it died in the middle of a three-lane bridge, my charger buried in my suitcase, a vague idea of where I was headed and no means to contact the friends who were storing my two suitcases and the large piano keyboard I’d borrowed back from my sister. That’s when I realised that my resilience, which had been flattened by the pandemic, was seeping back into me thanks to travel, unforeseen experiences and connections with interesting people. Here I was, in a conundrum, and I laughed.

My new apartment, which I did find without a hitch, is expansive and bright and … owned by a male millennial. An engineering one, to boot. The sheets are red, the duvet cover black. There is only short hanging space in the closet. There’s an iron but no ironing board. His food must arrive by delivery bike on the days he doesn’t dine out as there is no spatula, sieve, serrated knife or teaspoons. No large bowls for serving nor small ones for nuts and olives. Four plates, four bowls, a few mugs but no means to blend and, worse, no kettle to make tea. 

But there is a smart projector connected to a firestick, an uber-slick bathroom and an intrusive Alexa who with just a few words will turn lights on and off, select music and manage my viewing pleasure.

She now lives unplugged and wrapped in a towel at the back of one of the kitchen drawers. I don’t trust Jeff Bezos. 

To return to last night’s hockey game, which I watched on tv with some friends. This was first-round playoffs, a serious game, between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple Leafs. My home team, even if they haven’t won the Stanley Cup since the year my brother was born well over half a century ago. 

I watched hockey as a teenager, knew all the Leaf players’ names although never played it myself. Girls didn’t in the 1970s. Last night was an unexpected encounter with a game I knew well in the past. And in this day of overly-curated perfection, I enjoyed the toughness, the gritty emotions, even the gloves-off fights. (And since you asked, yes, the Leafs won.)

I feel aware of who I am and how I am, even if I don’t know where I will be in six months’ time. I try to bring that eyes-wide attitude to this year of existential ... discovery. I overthink things – not a surprising statement to those who know me – yet can gaze outwards and see how fortunate I am to have this time to explore myself, to search for challenging opportunities and I feel immense gratitude for my friends on almost all the continents (can I count that connection I felt with a gorgeous king penguin in Antarctica?)

Onward and upward, then. Outside, the sky is grey and the rain hasn’t stopped falling for at least twelve hours, inside the music plays and a book on the sofa calls me. A perfect Sunday. 

I’ve been cusping for the last five weeks. I’m not sure if this is actually a word, but it describes what I imagine is the pull one feels when born “on the cusp” of a star sign. I’m no longer “back there”, but nor have I “moved on.” I’m in-between, at the end of my four months in Costa Rica but not yet beginning my next domicile in Montreal.

I met Fiona in California on March 11th for a week-long road trip. Yesterday, I flew into Toronto from Chicago after seeing Mads, and in between I spent a week in Mexico, as per my last post, as well as returned to Costa Rica to pack up. Tomorrow I drive to Montreal, but I don’t stay there quite yet. I’ve got a quick trip into Maine before I settle into my next longer-term stay in Montreal.

In this cusp time, in the past five weeks that is, I have slept in ten different beds (yes, I counted them), and will sleep in two other beds, in two different countries, before I get to my 13th bed since March 11th next Wednesday in Montreal.

It is a little wearying, I won’t deny it. Yet it is almost always tinged with an excitement, a curiosity as to what might happen, what I might see, or think, or experience. These adventures are often little - an evening at Second City comedy in Chicago, a vintage fair in Toronto, the elephant seal colony in California, avocado toast for breakfast on my own in a delightfully-friendly restaurant in Lincoln Park - but the ever-changing nature of my life makes small events like these that much more meaningful.

I once read that it is the repetitive nature of our lives, of our schedules, that makes life feel as though it is whizzing by so much quicker as we age; unlike those years of wonder as a child, when so much was new and ever-changing that a week took forever.

Before I left Chicago, Mads read my cards. I think my interesting year is going to get more interesting, if we have interpreted the cards well. I’ll keep you posted.

The evening that Mads and I went to Second City was fabulous. It's classic Chicago entertainment and many now-famous celebrities began their comedic career here: Alan Alda, Bill Murray, Catherine O’Hara, John Belushi, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, the list is endless! But more than the comedy, we met up with long-time friends from Cayman and four of their friends, some of whom I had met before. The camaraderie was lovely. Out on an evening in a big city, the light slowly sinking into night, the excitement of a pub beforehand, lots of chit-chat, then the thrill of great comedy in an established venue.

It underlined the importance of community to me. Community can be fleeting – a quick meet up with friends who live far away to share an evening together. Or catching up with neighbours from the street. It’s never life on repeat, there are always new stories. Spending time with other people means not controlling the conversation, being open to jinks in discussion and having unexpected laughs. I like it. I’d like more of that, please.

I feel that I am becoming more and more present every day in my life. Finishing up the book that I wrote with Fiona’s life prompts has helped reinforce that I am a writer. My words resonate, and I am endlessly surprised when I reread what I wrote months before. So my purpose is less about what I want to do to make the world a more beautiful place, or where I want to live, but rather how can I use words to reach other people? To emotionally connect or at least affect others, and perhaps advance causes by writing stories that resonate. 

If I can figure that out, I suspect I will feel multi-dimensional.

Any tips or suggestions always welcome. A journey is started with a single step.

Best Birthday card EVER!