Sculptures in Emerson Street

In March 2010 a scuptress made an art deco figurine of a lady with a dog and it's home is in the semi-pedestrianised art deco building adorned Emerson Street in Napier, New Zealand. At the time I blogged about it on my other blog. When I returned this year I discovered an addition: a youngster waving to her from one of the canopy supports. 

By the way I don't think that the chap second from the left in the top picture is Jeremy Corbyn.

Be Happy

I don't think that I've ever shared a public video before on this blog. Jaz shared this on Facebook and it made me realise not just the power of laughter but the beauty it brings. Look at the change in the faces of those who smile. Jaz has always been an inspiration to me. Which reminds me that I really should start some more Thankful Thursday posts. By the way you will need a little patience: it takes a short while before the text below turns into the video.

SMILE:)
Posted by Silvia Rodrigo Gella on Monday, 29 February 2016

Where is Home?

Home is such an emotive word. It can conjure up so many ideas and so many emotions and, of course, it tends to vary with cultures and individuals. 

This morning I woke early and read a blog post by Katie Macleod.  Katie, who hails from Lewis and whose parents live in this township of Eagleton, is the journalist, traveller and expat Scot (living in the USA) behind the blog Stories My Suitcase Could Tell.

The post I read this morning was entitled What Happens When an Expat Goes Home and it was followed by another post with a short travel video biopic of her home: The Hebrides.

I've written about home before and I recalled ending a post in 2013 with the words "My birthplace was entirely beyond my control.  Where I choose to call my home isn't.  Whatever my nationality may be on my passport I am a Hebridean Kiwi in my heart."

To me Home is Lewis. It is where my heart returns from wherever I happen to have been. It is where, when the plane touches down, I know I belong. It's where, when the ferry arrives I drive onto the soil that will claim me when I'm gone. There is no logical rhyme or reason to that because, although I've lived here the majority of my life,  I was born and brought up elsewhere. But I have no family, friends or any emotional bond to the place of my birth. I have all of those things here on Lewis.

However, having spent, nearly 10 years living 6 months in New Zealand and 6 months at home here on Lewis the subject of my emotional home is one that has often been in my thoughts. Oddly when I left Napier for my first journey home after living there for 6 months I was very emotional just as I was when the plane landed on Lewis where I felt that I was Home and that was it. As the years went on the emotions for both places got stronger when I arrived and left each one. However because I always expected to return the emotions stabilised. I was always going to see the other again.

Until, that is, I had an enforced longer period back home on Lewis over the last two years. I’ve just returned from 6 weeks instead of 6 months in New Zealand. Whilst I was there it was as if I’d never been away. I felt that I could happily live there. But when I left I just got on the plane and left. It was hard leaving friends and The Family but all of a sudden it was somewhere I had visited and not my second home.

The plane set down on Lewis and it was as if I’d never been away. That’s how I think it will always be from now on. Time will tell.

What does home mean to you? 

It's All My Fault and I've Fallen in Love

It's Friday. Good Friday. Not good weatherwise. It's been blowing a gale. It's Heather's birthday today. Sorry Heather. In all my travels I forgot to send a card. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. (I may be atheist but I did the spot of Latin and went to a few Roman Catholic services in my time). In my defence life has been very full on and very full of people since I arrived back in Scotland and even more so since I arrived home to visiting friends ensconced in Tigh na Mara. Not that I haven't enjoyed it all. I have. But it's been a challenge trying to find time to do 'things' in between eating bacon rolls at Café Torino and The Woodlands and eating Anna's and Sue's meals. I haven't cooked a meal since I left Napier.

I still haven't even begun to think about my remaining New Zealand  blog posts. New Zealand seems so long ago and so far away. Well, of course, it is far away. And before I know it it will be long ago. I miss The Family and my friends there dreadfully. I miss the heat and the sun.

It's cold and wet and very windy here and I can feel everyone looking at me and saying "It's your fault. We were having a lovely spell of weather until you set foot on the tarmac."

I now have two weeks to get myself straight and fit before I go into hospital for a knee replacement. I never cease to be amazed at what can be done to keep us alive and kicking.

Oh and when I was in NZ I fell in love - again. This time, however, it was a much safer sort of love from some of my past encounters. A friend was working in Australia whilst I was in New Zealand and lent me her car. I had never driven one before. I hope that I drive one again.

And as if one kindness wasn't enough when I reluctantly gave it back a couple of days before I returned, another friend lent me his. People can be very kind.