I’d say it’s what separates us, not from the beasts, but the bestial. Creating the future, renewing a learned past - these are reasons to strive. Writing for and with love, taking and framing an image, stretching new melodic skins onto old skeletons of song… it’s how we manage to fly. It’s how we stay you and me, not us and them.
Unlike Osk, who seemed to establish his own tactical task force wherever we lived, scooping up neighbourhood feline troublemakers as sidekicks (including the memorable ginger behemoth Watson, with whom he used to scope the street from the safety of the shed roof), Jelly has the intelligence gathering skills of a sponge cake.
Anyway, somewhere in between my 'and then you should've done this' and 'why didn't you say x and y, rather than z', and 'for the love of monkeys and the general public's eyesight, you didn't honestly wear that heinous shirt did you', something he was saying about the dating extravaganza we were picking to pieces finally penetrated my cloud of self-congratulatory cumulo-waffle.
"Most people don't talk about how dates are progressing as a tender process, do they?" he asked.
"What?"
"She said I was 'part way through the tender process' and that she was judging me on my submission. I'd like to think there was irony involved, and I think at the time I may have given an admittedly weak "haha, yesssss, quite". Looking back, I'd have to conclude, computer says no on the presence of Fabulon or other aids to achieving crisply pressed linen."
And suddenly, somewhere in between Matplats and Badrums, your relationship is resembling that moment where Katniss and Peeta are about to eat the berries... and not in a dying for true love kinda way.
However.
There is hope. You can pass this test. Really really.
““Home interprets heaven. Home is heaven for beginners.””
I hate flying. I absolutely detest it. I would rather cage-fight crocodiles than be on a plane in turbulence. In fact, I would consider that an opportunity for picking out bespoke matching shoes and handbag and thank the organisers profusely. If ever The Hunger Games existed in reality and I was forced to compete, all the Game Makers would need to do is stick us all on a plane and say 'the quicker you do the deed, the quicker you get off' - and bam, they would have a merciless puppet of the State.
Hey, my name is Kate after all. Kateniss could work.
My point though, when I stop rabbiting on about being a Girl On Fire, is this; I was so tired yesterday afternoon on a flight back from Sydney, that I actually fell sleeps on the plane.
Before it even left the runway.
This is profound tiredness, which made me particularly snarly when the flight attendant decided I didn't need to be asleep, I needed to be asked if I wanted to purchase anything to snack on.
Tempted as I was to answer her with 'yes your liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti' and Hannibal Lecter 's-s-s-s-s' noises, I didn't want to sit in a straightjacket for the rest of the flight, so I settled for the Kate Stone (copyright pending) Glare Of Death which subdued her accordingly, and then sat and admittedly had a lovely conversation with my fellow traveller (mainly about slightly stupid flight attendants).
Eventually we reached Gold Coast aeropuerto, and I toodled straight off - literally - into the sunset, and drove home, with a short stop at the crazy shops where everyone was buying enough food for the Apocalypse as everything is closed for one whole day.
And it was on the way home, whilst conversing long distance with the Dread Pirate, that I realised something very important.
I had just done my first return to my new home - and it felt like home.
Awesome. Quite astonishing really, as despite a number of visitations to the weirdness that is my new locale, I have not lived anywhere like this in my life. And honestly, after less than a week, it could be expected that it would still feel completely alien, and strange, and a little bit unreal. But instead, it felt like sanctuary, and that is a whole big whack of gratitude right there. Enough, if not for a lifetime, then certainly enough for a very happy Easter break.
Kate the Grateful indeed.
Or was that Kateniss the Grateful.
Heh.
