This blog started (almost a decade ago – my god!) as a personal account of what it was like for an American to fall in love and move to England, leaving family and friends and security behind. Since then it has evolved into a reflection of my current interests: currently MMO gaming, but in the past it has been a horse blog or a book blog or a number of other things.
I’m still madly in love with my husband. I’m still (for the most part) also madly in love with the UK. Like a long-married couple, I take it for granted. It’s been a long time since I’ve walked through a churchyard, or the old market village in which we live and marvelled at the sheer age and permanence of things. Sometimes, however, I see with fresh eyes again and am struck speechless by the beauty of it all.
For instance, there is a rocky tor, a kind of hill with a rock outcropping, near where we live called Cloud. Hen Cloud, formally I think – but everyone just calls it Cloud. I love it. I love the name, and I love the way that the rock extends from the soft hillside around it.I love the rock which is also a cloud.
Over the years, I’ve talked about a lot of personal things: family and friends, politics, my ongoing fight with depression, the death of my mother, and much more. Recently it’s been less personal, but that will change. This blog is such a reflection of who I am, and how that person has changed over the years. It would be disastrous to lose it. (Personal note, must back blog up!) Sometimes, when things are darkest and I can’t see around the depression, I’ll go back at random and re-live bits of the past. It helps.
I am a rock. But I can also be a cloud.