Fly, baby, fly

Writing this 35,000 feet above sea level, I am dancing on the clouds cloaking and draping the Siberian landscape, as if we are surfing waves of white light, towards an invisible shore – on the way to Portugal, to my love, on my way to Anjès, in Holland, but – there is always a but - away from Tess and Yarrow, in Australia.  Off again on the now oh so familiar to-ing and fro-ing between continents. I´ve seen, photographed, noted and drawn magnificent shapes and colours which will need to find their way to canvas – the contours of drops of water, leaves, roots and waves in tundra, frozen rivers, mountains and lakes. 

It´s been a challenging week or two, what with an almost total lack of Internet (hence radio silence on the blog) so Niki and I have had to resort to the good old medium of the telephone and text messages and´, even though we´ve had contact at least once daily, we didn´t actually physically ´see´ each other that much. We´ll both be so glad when this ´communication lark´, as my love called it at one stage, is behind us and we no longer have to be in two time-zones and speak to each other through impersonal social media.

This flight, from Tapei to London, is taking the longest route I´ve ever had a plane to Europe take: 15 hours... first backtracking northeast from Tapei, across the whole length of Japan, to then turn west and arch over Siberia. A beautiful day flight, though – even though I´ve had to challenge the authority of the cabin staff by keeping my window blind open while the other passengers ´rest´. Admittedly just one of these throws a lot of light into the cabin but, hey, this IS a day flight people, not a night flight.

I´ve left the farm in the capable hands of Darren, who lives in the Bails and will take care of the cats, and Red, the handyman who will do jobs around the place while I am away; and Chicco in the loving embrace of Tess, Yarrow, Mieke, John and Bryony.