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Check out my new parenting blog HERE :)

Changes...

In March of this year I was settled back in the UK, in a retail job with a major computing and technology corporation. Not only had I come to terms with the non-tropical humdrum existence of life back home in England, but I had been involved in a romantic liaison with a work colleague for several weeks.
Towards the end of March I felt a bit peculiar - even by my standards. And so one morning I found myself perched on the edge of a toilet seat clutching a urine-soaked plastic stick in white knuckles, trembling like a leaf in the wind. It became hard to focus through tear-glazed eyes, but I was unable to look away, unable to blink, utterly transfixed by the double pink lines that glowed out from the sodden litmus paper.

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I knew what that code meant, I had checked and rechecked the leaflet ten times already. Two lines = POSITIVE

POSITIVEPOSITIVEPOSITIVEPOSITIVEPOSITIVEOHSHITOHFUCKPOSITIVEPOSITIVEPOSITIVEHOLYCRAPOHGODPOSITIVEPOSITIVEPOSITIVE... The word cycled endlessly in my head. Time stopped. My world spun. I'm pregnant, I'm knocked up, I'm having a baby, I'm well and truly up the bloody duff.

This sort of thing doesn't happen to me, I thought. It has never happened to me! I chase sharks, wrestle stingrays, run away to sea with French men, make solo expeditions to remote corners of the globe...but this? Having babies is not an adventure I'm qualified for! Marriage, mortgages, children, that's what other people do!

In the six months since then I have watched the seasons change, and with them, my body too. As I write this I'm balancing my laptop on my baby bump, which is already huge and round, swollen with the life growing within. The keyboard twitches and wobbles with every kick and sometimes I stop to stroke my belly and smile.


The relationship with the baby's father was brief and ended soon after it begun, back in spring, but he is still around and we continue to share a commitment to being the best parents possible when the time comes. Modern co-parenting is so 2011!

So now this old travel blog of mine is destined to take a different turn, a new route that will be the biggest adventure yet. What happens when this free spirited ex traveller takes on the most important job of all?

TInkerbell, pack away your fairy wings, it's time to be a mummy!



(Due date: Dec 15 2010)

Let's Hear It For The Sun

One day, about 6 months ago, I was driving up the coast road that runs parallel to Seven Mile Beach, and the sun was setting behind the ocean in a huge explosion of pink and coral and amber light. I was listening to Johnny Nash on the stereo in my newly purchased car, and everything about the moment was quite suddenly overpoweringly blissful. So I shrieked, out loud; I cheered, quite vocally and finished with a heartfelt Whooooooop! of sheer joy. A couple of tourists shared my release of emotion, as they were walking quite close by along the roadside and my windows were wide open. I may have startled them a little, but I think they enjoyed it too.

I remember thinking, Wow, I live here? This island of white sand and palms, where the sun rises and sets each day like a golden God, over waters so dazzling that they seem painted on. I live here!

Of course I have driven that same road at sunset many, many times since then, but I have not screamed with bliss again, the way I did that first time. Is that what happens? Can we only experience the deepest intensity of feeling the very first time, and each subsequent time, it is a more diluted experience?

I vow to cheer at The Sun, the very next time I see him.

Suspended over The Abyss

Thirty-four hours ago I was enacting a dream. The repetitive dream that visits me with such frequency is one of floating underwater, suspended in the deep blue, which stretches to infinity on every side.

On Saturday morning, February 14th, Valentines Day, I spent time with my love. The object of my desire - the focus of my passion, my imagination, and my adrenaline fuelled dreams. Diving. To be specific, diving the Great Wall off the shores of Little Cayman, where a shallow reef ends abruptly, dropping vertically into a deep ocean trench of more than 6000 feet. Visibility is seemingly infinite in this protected marine environment. At 80ft down, I could still see the sunlight sparkling on the surface far above.

The underwater world wrapped me in it's cool embrace as I floated out over the abyss. I had swam out into the open ocean about 50 yards, leaving the security of the reef wall in order to view the entire scene from further back. It was majestic. The other divers were tiny against the backdrop of coral heads, sea fans, and shadowy crevices. Below, there was nothing but the yawning deep. Behind, the open ocean - wild, deep waters stretching 150 miles to Cuba.

My imagination was running wild. The last time I dived a wall of this magnitude and water clarity, was the drop off in Sipadan, Malaysia - the same unforgettable occasion that a school of several hundred hammerheads passed overhead. Today, there were no hammerheads. Just the abyss and I. I floated, frozen in time. Meditative. This is my life, I thought. I smiled behind my regulator. Yes, this is my life, and what a life it is!

Click here to read the article I wrote about my night at Canama Bay - where the opening of the Grand Cayman Film Commission saw the red carpets graced by a few celebs straight off the boat from Hollywood! I went along as a photographer with work and ended up interviewing Jennifer Coolidge, and a number of other stars and dignitaries! I really am a jammy wotsit, aren't I. :)