paint your pallet blue and grey

It’s been a while.

I’d hoped it might feel like a comfortable shoe that one could slip back into, but it feels rather more like an stiff old shirt, ill fitting and a little too tight around the collar.

So here’s to a happy, healthy new year to everyone before I forget, and a brief review of the events of the last few months by way of explanation and apology to friends I’m doing a bloody good job of not deserving.

Essentially I have been gone because at the end of last year I disappeared, figuratively, into a revolving door of travel and corporate entertainment, living out of suitcase, drunkenly, always packing, laundry, sleeping fitfully 'in transit' or dropping my poor boys of at the kennels, to the point where I…how can I describe, “lost balance” I think, forgot what was (is) important, even necessary, and then the wheels simply fell off. Just for a short while but terrifying nevertheless. I know Clotho by name, I held hands with Lachesis for a short while and turned away just in time to hide from Atropos, but I'm sure I smelt her breath and it was sweet and I was sorely tempted.

Just an incident. A lesson I suppose I couldn’t have missed.

So mostly since then I have been trying to immerse myself in what is self evidently important, friendship and the health necessary to enjoy them.

I had a great New Year in Minneapolis, I have to tell you that Sandra is amazing, the hostess with the mostest, kind and great fun (Laddie really is that beautiful and noble in person). Jenn is wonderful, truly upbeat, and with her friend Shelley the four of us just had one of the happiest, funniest, joyous nights I’ve had in an age. And I was honoured to meet the diminutive 4th of those blythe spirits and fell head over heals for a tiny, beautiful, shy girl with a spectacular grin that lit up the room when she deigned to eventually grace us with it.

And now it’s back to work, for a while at least, back into the revolving door but with a full battery and a better perspective.

Spare a thought for Toffee, he’s been in agony with his knee this past six weeks and he’s finally going to go for surgery on his cruciate ligament tomorrow…it’s by far the most important thing going on around here at the moment.

He's lying with his head on my lap as I write and I just want to tell him it's okay, you'll run again.