Bluebell Season

For the next few weeks woodlands will be carpeted with bluebells, lending a heady scent to the air and a delightful impressionistic hue to the ground. They are frustratingly difficult to photograph though and present an elusive subject at the best of times.
It seems as if the season starts a little earlier each year and, yesterday, walking in the woods behind the Tilling valley, Judy and I spotted the first few nodding heads appearing on open ground beneath the canopy of wintery trees.
Yesterday was a bumpy day for my pension planning. I had been in the process of what seemed a sound plan to secure my funds in a scheme that would satisfy both the HMRC (Britain's tax agency) and the IRS only to find that the HMRC had suspended such transfers for a week and then had de-listed the scheme I had hoped to use. It all seems very bizarre and Kafka-esque and makes this emigration process a little convoluted. So, today, I will consult my specialist advisors and start again.
Its a nerve wracking process though, for our financial future is in their hands...


Nicholas

It took a long while for me to begin to write what was on my mind this morning.

Perhaps because I wished for a different topic, but none came…

Yesterday we had a beautiful walk and lunch with wonderful friends who have just returned from a 4-month stay in Australia. Here is a photograph of them, their daughter and her partner, and me when we were all in Paris for Nicholas’ exhibition on the Left Bank.

With less than 2 months before we leave this country I have the growing realization that my close relationships will need to change, to become more flexible. And I know I will need to spend more time keeping in touch, and holding them creatively across the ocean and across time.

For Valentine’s Day this year Nicholas created DVDs from the VHS recording of our wedding. I see things in the filming that I never saw during the wedding weekend. There was immense joy and support and love, but sometimes the camera catches friends looking sad and almost overwhelmed by the reality that we will be moving just after our honeymoon. And they, like me, thought I would never be living in the USA again.

Now, it is reversed, we are moving home to New York and I feel the same kind of joy mingling with sorrow. What a bittersweet gift to love, and be loved, by so many, so deeply.

Judy