Coming Clean

I drove to Saxmundham this evening to see my physio, and had a slight sugar episode on the way. It's a sort of a wobble because I hadn't eaten enough during the day. How wonderful then to remember that Olivia had made me up a couple of little emergency bags which she stored in the glove compartment. After a handful of nuts and fruit I was good to go again. I found Jon when first we moved to Suffolk over seven years ago by one of those amazingly lucky chances. After years and years of crouching over first a typewriter and then a computer, holding in stress and tension, my shoulders were solid and unmoving, my back permanently ached and my neck was stiff. Jon came to the house twice a week for six months before easing down to once a week for the next few years. Slowly, very slowly he lifted my scapulas out of their atrophied prison, he freed up my back, he returned me to full movement again. He never gave up the belief that he could do this even though I often despaired. And through all those lengthy sessions we gossipped and laughed and put the world to rights. I still see him from time to time for a tweak and a massage. He's one of the very best people I know.

Caroline finally managed to get her story of the family's first trip to Poland to me from frozen Iowa. Her husband cycled away from his homeland aged 16 after his family disappeared, and now many decades later he was returning with Caroline and their three small children. Caroline kept a very detailed diary of the month-long trip, in 1962, and she's turned it into a fascinating account. I'm going to persuade her to begin at the very beginning and recount her own strange childhood as the daughter of Edwardian bohemian intellectuals, and success as an international fencing champion like her mother. People like this are so interesting, especially when you get them to talk about themselves. I might make it the work of my last 30 years to get them all writing down their lives. Goodness knows I'm surrounded by them.