Day 4: Coming Up For Air

I'm not going to lie.  Today has had me diving quite deep, but there have been breathing holes, and I have taken advantage of every one of them.

I played a game on the train today.  If the people on the carriage were X-Men, what would their special powers be?  As I mused, two people looked up and started smiling at me for no apparent reason.  I was shocked.  Perhaps they felt endowed with super-powers; perhaps I looked like a simpleton.  I will never know, as I didn't feel I could ask the question...

Coffee with Julia, who is so happy at the moment, and looks like a cat in peak condition.  Glossy, sleek and loved.  Everything shines - her hair, her patent leather shoes and her eyes.  Conversation that doesn't faff about at the surface, but gets straight in there.  Littered with reference points, and I realise how much shared history we have.  Not just time, but a litany of ridiculous and intense experiences - shrieking up and down hotel corridors in 1920s costume; time lines on cliff tops in the spring sunshine; weeping with laughter over fish bowls and Juergen. 

Later I'm wandering, teary and rudderless through the streets of St Albans and Peter's voice on the end of the phone steering me through the dusk, warmly and firmly.  With twenty years of friendship behind us, his hand is at my back, urging me to put one foot in front of the other and keep going forwards.  I am lucky, lucky, lucky.

Home to my excellent Sennheiser earphones and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.  Measured, intricate, perfect, joyful.  My heart rate slows, my shoulders drop.  Keep on keeping on.  Breathe.