coming or going

My sleepy eyes opened reluctantly to be greeted by the early morning sun glimmering dim crimson above the bare frosty treetops rising through the billowing mist that rolled down the cold lazy river. ‘Oh for crying out loud will you shut those fucking curtains Tilly!’ I shouted lovingly at my daughter. ‘But Mummy, you said we could go Christmas shopping today’, sighed my darling girl. ‘We can’t go out’, I told her, ‘Daddy isn’t here to scrape the ice off the windscreen.’ ‘Oooh Mummy!’ sighed Tilly, and stormed off. I sighed too. I knew that the time to decide whether we were going to stay up north or go back to London was approaching as fast as I was losing the feeling in my toes that Tilly has left poking out from the duvet.

I remembered my children’s little faces when I told them we were leaving London. I should remember, it had taken long enough to get them to show an expression that would sound suitably poignantly innocent yet charmingly humorous when I descibed it in my book. My father had been more encouraging. I think he thought that by taking civilisation to The North I was finally following in the footsteps of his career in the Colonial Service. I remembered telling my best friend. ‘There is no life outside the M25!’ she had sobbed. I remembered telling the other reporters at the Sunday Times I was going to the north. ‘Where?' they had asked, perplexed. I took them into the next office where there was a national map of Britain on the wall but it only went as far north as the village where princess Diana was buried. Well, I suppose it is called Northamptonshire, sigh. There had been some good memories of course. I fondly remembered the Aga dressing ceremony held to celebrate the last local moving out of my street, winning the injunction against the silver band practising during Location Location, and then there were the locals of course.

I had grown rather attached to the local northern people I had studied for my book, almost as attached as I had become to the Umba Lumbas of Upper Borneo with whom I stayed in my authentic barn conversion at the very heart of their community while I wrote my first travel book Strife in the Wilderness: three months without Radio 4. I had found that these quaint charming northerners with their curious ways had rather grown on me. They have told me how much they love Strife in the North too, well, at least I think that's what they were saying, it's hard to tell sometimes, sigh. I felt I had really lived alongside these people in their daily lives, shared their struggles, understood their worries, borne their burden, and so had my nanny, cleaner, personal trainer, feng shui consultant and life coach. I knew that Strife in the North could be an even bigger money spinner, I mean genuinely heartfelt account of northern life, than the Umba Lumbas book so although I am comforted that my sister blogger whose heartfelt sincerity so inspires me will soon have to make the same choice I know it won't make it any easier when the time comes to have to ask my husband, are we going back home, darling, please, you gotta let me know...