smoky mountain sojourn

in five days time i will flee scotland's rather grim weather and head for the good old US of A. it's been a while and this time around i am not heading for new york but for new jersey. a quick stopover and then into the car and off ...
look out smoky mountains here i come!

i do sometimes wonder about little old me, born in estcourt in the foothills of the drakensberg. how the hell did i get where i am today?
life is strange, life is wonderful and for those of us willing to fly a little close to the sun ...
well, life loves to surprise us.

this time of the year is always somewhat sad for me. too many memories of love and loss. come september i find myself feeling down, wonder why and then remember why. it is my time of the sad. at first my conscious mind is unaware, it has been a long time - nine years. but the ache still waits, locked deep inside, almost forgotten until memory stirs and i find that i can still forget to breath.

the invite to visit my 'angel of the morning' came at just the right time. she is a wonderfully charming and intelligent women, most capable of offering the distraction and interaction necessary to lift my spirits.

the last time i visited with angel she was dead set on encouraging me 'not to smoke'. her solution - every time i fancied a cigarette i would first have to eat three cranberries (as in cranberry au naturelle), straight from the bush or wherever it is that cranberries grow. angel sounded (dare i say it) almost gleeful when she mentioned buying a barrel of cranberries to assist me in overcoming my addiction. not a chance! i fly with a suitcase filled with nicotine patches!

no need to wonder if i am somewhat silent over the next month. the reef will be sans internet, happily wandering mountain trails, scaring the bears and listening for the sound of wolves howling for the moon.

"who killed my orchids?"

i watered the orchids! oh sheit was i supposed to water the orchids? she said "please water the plants", so i did, well... orchids are plants too are they not?
it's just that the animal doc is like a fundi of flowering orchids. is your orchid sitting there sulking, not a blossom in sight? no problem, send it to board with the animal doctor. before you know it - buds bursting out all over the place.

the reason for my concern is ... darn but if i am not terribly talented at causing travail amongst pot plants, the responsibility is killing me. still i can hardly cause mass root rot in a week, now can i?
as you might have guessed i am house sitting - for the animal doctor while she sashays around romania, visiting dracula's castle, eating wonderful romanian food and for all i know whispering with wolves. i should have gone with but ... oh no, so here i am taking care of a huge empty house, two enormous hounds, one very chubby turkish swimming cat (to whom i am allergic!) and hundreds of pots plants. well, it feels like hundreds!

however ...
i do get to drive the animal doctor's super duper, shiny, new volvo estate, with ... wait for it ...
six forward gears. oy what a dream!

ask me

i still believe in magic 
if you should wish to know 
i dream dreams of the future 
of shoe prints in the snow 

i see more than the imprint 
of just my lonely shoe 
i still believe that someday 
her print will be there too 

remember spring and when it comes 
the signs of life renewed 
i dream anew the dreams of old 
of love to be pursued 

i dream of lonely beaches 
of walking hand in hand 
of blue sky and warm sunshine 
and endless golden sand 

i think of autumn colours 
leaf shaped which swirl and fall 
of log fires burning in the hearth 
i dream i hear her call 

i still believe in magic 
that life will find a way 
all i need to do is wait 
till true love comes to stay 

so if you care to ask me 
what do i still dream of 
then i will answer loud and clear 
why, i still dream of love 

  Copyright © 2011 by Eryll Oellermann

my journey

warning!

attempting to move forwards whilst looking back is dangerous. this action often leads to errors of judgement which cause unnecessary pain to the innocent.

in my personal opinion and i speak with the authority of personal experience ...

far better to sit a while, to wait in the silence with our grief and mourn our loss. time at the cross roads of life is never wasted, time to weep and wail for all that we have left behind. a place where nobody but God will hear us as we shake our fist at the heavens and scream "not fair, not fair!"

we should not tarry in this place of regret too long, i personally find it too easy to grow attached to my own pain. in time i hope to learn that pain is not a place to frequent but a lesson to learn.

yesterday is done, we live here in the now! sooner or later we will glimpse something of beauty ahead of us on the path towards tomorrow. we will once again feel the warmth of the sun and wonder at the colours of our earth home. it is 'the time'. The time to glance backwards one last time as we say goodbye to what was. we will not forget because our memories are the garden bed in which we grow. we will not forget but we should never look back as we carry our precious life lessons into the remainder of our journey.

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be,

it's the way it is.

The way you live it,

is what makes the difference."

...unknown

waiting for the bus

today i was waiting for the bus.

the first time i remember catching a bus ...
i must have been six maybe seven, we were still in the uk, living in a place called oakleigh cottage in sussex. i went to school in a village called broadbridge heath and the nearest market town was horsham.
the cottage we stayed in was on a farm, there was no road to the door (not that it mattered as we did not own a car). instead there was a long, long concrete path which meandered next to a field, through a wood and on to the cottage. the cottage was in fact two, divided in half with a shared rickety stairway leading to the attic rooms. the ones to the right were ours whilst our neighbours turned left at the top of the stairs.
i remember my 'big' sister, maureen, once put her hand right through the low ceiling whilst making the bed! there was no running water, the farmer would bring water in large milk urns and deposit them in the kitchen. the kitchen had a coal stove and as far as i can recall, we practically lived there in that one room, we bathed in a tin bath in front of the stove, ate and entertained at the kitchen table.
at night we would race upstairs, trying to beat the cold and dive into our beds where icy sheets greeted us - shudder ...

i digress, back to the bus ...
if i really think about it, i must have caught a bus to school, must admit though, i can't really remember that!
what i do remember was bus trips to horsham with my mom and little brother rod, who i call joey (but that is another story altogether). i took ballet and tap lessons (oh yeah, little girl butch just dancing her way through life!), my teacher was a miss swain, the very fact that i can still recall her name probably means i had a huge crush on her. on the way to the dance studio we walked past a bakery and i can still remember inhaling the delectable smell of baking bread which drifted from the door each time it opened.
then of course there was georgina! a senior student whom i most definitely had a crush on! she seemed so grown up, i wonder how old she actually was, probably twelve ...

there was an old man who caught the bus - again ... was he really old or just old to my young eyes. he smoked a very smelly pipe! i remember looking down from the bus window and seeing him waiting at the stop, how i hoped and prayed he would not get on the bus. that smelly tobacco made me feel quite ill.

mostly though, bus trips to horsham were fun. a visit to the saturday market where mom bought me a tortoise, when we left the uk to return home to south africa we set him free. i love to imagine my long lived tortoise still wandering around the woods near oakleigh cottage, how big might he be by now. actually i wonder if tortoises are even able to survive in the wild in england? damn, never even considered that before.

another treat was to visit the local chippy in horsham, it was down an alley and had a really low roof and windows of that thick bottle glass, running with age. it smelled of frying fish, vinegar and the wet raincoats of the patrons. they still wrapped everything in newspaper (obviously long before health and safety took over the rule Britannia role!) and the taste was ... i will never forget the taste of those hot, salty chips on a foggy winter eve.

a summer treat was to pop into the small tea room on the carfax. the carfax was at the centre of horsham town and had a bandstand at it's centre ... well, as far as i remember anyway!
mom would buy us both a small bottle of seven up. lemonade of the god's as far as i was concerned. england was not long out of rationing and me, myself and my brother were very impressed by the luxuries of town life.
then, away back home on the crowded bus, filled with chattering women, wide eyed children and (mostly) silent men. jump down from the bus at our stop and walk home, along the path, beside the field and through the wood.
home to oakleigh cottage, a home in the middle of nowhere, a home which held all that my young heart treasured.

pot plants and paella

funny town ...  kilmarnock. me, myself, i don't mind going there - as long as someone else is driving. i tend to get lost and have a deal of trouble finding parking. it always seems to me that kilmarnock is kind of ... all over the place. once i was supposed to meet my friend jeanie there, we were going to the movies, hah, easier said than done. even my beloved lady who lives in a box and tells me how to get from here to there in a very sexy voice ... even she was lost! kept taking me back to the same dead end, over and over.

so saturday there was a global market in kilmarnock or killie as the locals call their place called home. there is also the famous (in these parts) killie pie.
"A Killie pie or Kilmarnock pie is a type of pie sold at Rugby Park, the home ground of association football team Kilmarnock F.C.. It is somewhat unique in that it is a steak pie and not a Scotch pie, the type of pie associated with football in Scotland." 
thanks wikipedia!


back to kilmarnock and the global market ...
the animal doctor was happy to drive to the benighted place, so me, myself, i was delighted to accompany her.
a new experience for me.
stall after stall of, mostly edible goodies from all over the world, what a temptation!
there was all the usual market patter, beseeching you to to try and expecting you to buy, offering more for less until your hand makes for your wallet almost of it's own volition.
cheeses, olives and pesto, sweet pastries,chocolates, breads, paella, german sausage, italian sausage, cakes to tempt a saint, nuts - salted, honeyed, flavoured... ah ... the list is endless.
the weather was fair - well, it wasn't raining!
the streets were awash with humanity, enjoying the day, happy to spend. kids darted in, out and under, clasping paper bags filled with their booty, whining for more. some poor souls, pale of face with the glazed eyes of the over extended eater clutched plastic bowls which were once filled  with tiny marshmallows and big juicy strawberries over which the vendor would pour great globs of melted chocolate.


of course there were not only food stalls (food is simply a particular interest of mine), there was jewellery, clothing, leather, hand made soap and paper, those wonderful wooden flower pot people and even a native american stall, complete with dream catcher and even an authentic looking native american in a feathered headdress, he was doing some really rattling dancing, i was completely entranced until i heard his scottish accent.

so we wandered, me, myself and the animal doctor, we wandered up and down, in and out, testing and tasting and on occasion throwing calorie counting caution  to the four winds as we gave in to the temptation of a particularly scrumptious morsel. we cruised the stalls until our tummies were full and our feet tired, until the crowds grew too dense and the dark clouds gathered.


not such a bad place really ... kilmarnock, just don't ask me to drive there!