The indescribable moments of your life
Here we are again, then – The Last Day. I should be packing, ready to head back to the Motherland, but I’ve just woken up from a nap on the sofa and I really can’t be bothered.
I’ve learned to never have any preconceptions about what it’ll be like out here. This has been our fifth long stay and they’ve all been radically different. Same small village, same things to do, totally different experiences.
When we first started dreaming about our 3 months each year in the alps, I sentimentally imagined a life of relaxation, headspace and Getting My Shit Together. But guess what? It doesn’t work like that. Life has a habit of hitching its perceived star to your wagon and coming along for the ride, whether it’s invited or not – and that has to be ok, otherwise the dissonance between fantasy and reality would be mind bending. And I can bend my mind perfectly well by myself, thank you.
I was feeling reflective this morning as I did a few last laps of Le Mélèze, being battered by hail, wind and rain to get me back in the mood for Welsh Weather. It has been, in some ways, a strange month this time. We arrived slightly battered and bruised after months of Nick being prodded and poked and tested, with all the emotion and worry that brings. The outcome is looking hopeful and for that I am more thankful than I can say.
The weather has been mainly terrible. I’ve had far too much work to do. Nick injured his ankle on Day 2. I’ve had a pretty unpleasant ear infection for the last week and I’m still not feeling too chipper, despite horse pill sized French antibiotics. If you focus in too much, these things can send a trip sideways. And yet, in the end, they don’t really matter. There have been far more good bits than not when you focus out – those small, yet indescribable moments that make the big stuff feel far less insurmountable. The wonderful things that come out of nowhere, just when you least expect them. And there have been plenty of those to counteract the dross over the last year.
I’m off to indulge in the resolute urgency of now by visiting Madame, to say goodbye and have one last slice of the flan that only the French seem able to make properly. Distressingly, I have completely gone off alcohol – suboptimal when we’re going to be spending the night in Reims tomorrow.
And that’s it from me for another 3 months. We’ll be back in mid July for 6 weeks, when I’ll hopefully be running one of the local races – something I wasn’t sure would ever be possible again last summer.
