3 January 2016

Our last night in Las Palmas...

I was observing the sunset and this marina isn't great for that. The dunes at Maspalomas are a better location for Sunset Lovers.

Ulric is bragging that today's "repairs of the heads" (this refers to the boat toilet, not brain surgery!) have been extremely successful. Well done darling - spare me the gory details please...

We (that is to say Dad) returned the car today. Brendan and I pegged out an industrial machine of laundry on the railings to catch the Midday Sun and save on dry tumbling.

In the night a sudden urge came over me to work some more on my book. The ending needs some more work and there needs to be more about parenting children with serious disabilities. So I got out my notebook and wrote those in draft. I also wrote "The Open Letter to Paediatricians! I had intended to write on the plane.

Brendan is not too keen to go home. He reminds me that he is a Nature Child and that he doesn't like the buzz and stress of the city. This tells me we maybe leave London after he does his GCSE's (Elliott and Quinn will be independent by then) and take him to Untamed Canada (or the Swedish West Coast, failing that!) WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE....

So I was observing the sunset, such as it was. A Cloud Crocodile (possibly a dragon) came and ate the Sun. Then it ate Las Palmas. Everything plunged into darkness and suddenly nothing seemed very real!

There was a lot of activity on the Boat from Switzerland today. I can feel the call of the local boat community to get involved and provide an instant social life (i.e. to spend hours chatting telling tales), to help out and provide some baby sitting. I actively and consciously decided not to. I am here to rest and catch up on sleep. We are paying our own child -minder money to be here for a week. I do NOT need more friends (as I am not giving enough of myself to the friends I already have) and I am NOT willing to give away very rare time off from clients, students and teenagers....

I my old age I am FINALLY developing personal boundaries - about time too!!

So I have enjoyed both Cave Time and The Outings and now I am ready to go home and face the music: on-line teaching, radio shows and more editing of the book (Natural Born Shamans - A Spiritual Toolkit for Life, out in 2016!)

So we made rum punch - to remember our sunset drinks on deck in the Caribbean - and did some dreaming. Ulric would like to visit one more island in the Canaries. I would like to visit Namibia and Untamed Africa. Brendan came running to remind both of us of the Polar Bear Hotel in Manitoba, Canada. He has already negotiated at Treat Trip to Greenland tooto celebrate Ulric's new job! The job he will definitely start in 2016!

There is no lack of dreams here. Even Jagzy (Brendan's jaguar) is dreaming of cubs and honeys steaks and hunting in the rain forests of Belize. Orion is up, the Great Hunter in the Night Sky. Dinner will be soon. The flight home is tomorrow afternoon. And I am still not sure if the Granary Islands (named for Grand Granaria) were named for a small song bird - or not....

Imelda Almqvist

(La Palmas, Crand Graanaria).