“I thought you were already gone”. How many times have I heard this from friends and acquaintances over the last few weeks. No, firstt of September. THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER, OMG, that’s in just over one weeks time. The Calendar on the wall has crosses on it, and very soon there’ll be just one more line to fill in.
We’re packed. That is we have everything we’re taking, except a few clothes, that we’re wearing as the summer continues, today it was 23 degrees, so we can’t pack our tropical attire just yet. Then of course toiletries, and stuff we’ll remember we need at the last minute, but we’re ahead of the game, at least in that part of the adventure.
“You still here”, yes, but we leave next weekend.
We’ve started to receive cards, that say things like, sorry you’re leaving.
We’ve been leaving for so long, probably for two years. In fact I’m sure our original escape plan to start all this adventuring was scheduled for 2011. What got in the way? The crash in the housing market, the age of austerity, nothing moved for a long long time and so the plan, or the timescale moved ever forward, and in the meantime, stuff happened, life got in the way.
On the up side of the delay, it gave me time to make an album of original songs with my two best mates, Ewan and Juje. We’ve been playing together since 1989, so however long that is, twenty four years oh dear. Both Ewan and I are songwriters, and it’s great to record these master pieces, get them down, and out of your head, and to do be able to do it with such competent and inspiring musicians.
We’ve made an album of fourteen songs. The title of the album,” One life to live” sort of sums up what we’re about to dive into in the next ten days. In fact the first words you hear on the album are “maybe one day I’ll sail away”. It’s been a long job, meeting every Wednesday afternoon for over a year , maybe getting one song down a session. Then there were overdubs, and re-recording until we got to the final mixes which we finished just Yesterday.
A great project to bow out on, and to realise , to complete so close to our leaving, and HEY we’ve already sold two on an internet site called Bandcamp, onwards and upwards.
We’ve connected with our children and the grandchildren, and been through the emotional roller coaster of, this may be the last time we see each other for some time. It lends a different air on these moments, these obligations of the heart, before we launch ourselves into the precarious role of senile delinquents in charge of a yacht, out on the oceans of the Caribbean..