When we arrived here the hosts daughter, Carina (14) was all depressed and mopey because she had had to cancel a trip to America due to a whiplash injury the previous week. Very understandably as the America trip sounded fab. The whiplash was from a slamming on the brakes incident in Lisa’s car and was the same as had happened last year. It seemed quite extreme for a non-impact incident really but when Ady got a lift to Tescos with Lisa he mentioned how fast and erratic her driving was and as they live down a windy, poor visibility, all but single track lane I could see how that could happen if she drove too fast.
Today I was here with Lisa while Ady went off with John and we talked about various things – her being an only child of a single mother (who died suddenly last year), family dynamics, parenting, education, value for our chosen path in life amoung our family and friends and selves. I happened to mention that I have yet to drive Willow since we left home and that I want to make sure I don’t not drive for this whole year as I think it would be a bad thing to be out of practise driving for that long. Lisa mentioned that she is a really nervous driver and no longer goes on motorways or even big roads any more as she has lost her nerve and gets really panicky. She then said that just last week she had had another slamming of brakes incident with Yannic (their son) in the car and wonders why this keeps happening to her…
This morning we did some feeding the plants in the polytunnel with wee solution, picking strawberrries, a bit of weeding and then some stripping dried herbs (tarragon, sage, majoram, savoury, rosemary) off their stalks and into brown paper bags to finish drying and putting others into jars. I also did some removing dried salad leaf seeds from their seed pods. Scarlett mostly helped and chatted to us, while Davies was making films on his mobile phone which he then sent me by text message!
After lunch Lisa took Carina off to school which left me with the washing and drying up. I did that and then carried on with the herbs. Davies and Scarlett brought me up a cup of tea and a plate full of fresh fruit and some chocolate which was very lovely 🙂 We had an interesting conversation about film making, casting, screenplays and actors and then they went off to play. I started to wonder what was keeping Lisa and then had a phonecall from John to say she had arrived with him and Ady (working at John’s sisters about 3 miles away) very upset as something had happened with Carina in the car and could I check their answerphone to make sure the school hadn’t rung them. I did and then just carried on with the herbs.
Lisa then arrived back, still flustered to say she had had yet another slamming brakes on incident and Carina was shaken and so was she. She then wanted to talk more and I confess to not being that keen to get into further discussions about her daughter struggling with friendships at school and their relationship with each other. She’s a strange one Lisa, sometimes really keen to have initimate conversations and be very friendly and other times very closed. She does a lot of soul baring without actually being that interested in learning anything about you in return which I find slightly disconcerting. I don’t think she’s ever really asked me a question about us or our lives.
Anyway, she went back off out again so I finished off the herbs and then picked a huge bowl of raspberries which actually took me half an hour past when I was supposed to finish but the picking was so good today with loads of ripe ones I was happy to finish on that high 🙂
The kids and I hung out in the static until Ady returned just after 6pm. He had been building with John who is putting up a wood cabin in his sisters garden and needed an extra pair of hands today. Ady really enjoyed it – Lisa appearing sobbing and hysterical in the middle of the afternoon aside! – and learnt lots about the green building style John knows about, so a useful day for him.
Dinner was late which meant everything else has ended up late but we had a nice evening with them and tomorrow they are taking us out for the evening as a friend of theirs is performing at a local Greek taverna doing music and storytelling and they have offered to take us out for dinner to watch. I’m mostly looking forward to not having an alarm clock set in the morning 🙂