At Large Among The Dreaming Spires

What's this you say? Mollybawn? Who is she, who's been absent so long from these pages? She's having a completely lazy few days and thought she'd drop in here to report that she is alive and very well, and to see what you're all up to.

She has been wandering in the UK, sleeping in a variety of beds, enjoying the company of a vast variety of hospitable people more or less related to her, or to those she loves.  She's woken many mornings to the sound of the rooster calling lie-a-beds, such as herself, to order, and  kept up with the high jinks of a four year old steam engine enthusiast, who could run rings around her with the detailed knowledge he has of said engines. She has shared with his baby sister a fascination with the guinea fowl who roam around his (other) grandparents' farm, and eaten vegetables and eggs grown there that couldn't be fresher if she got down on hands and knees and ate them off the vines, or staked out the broody hens in the chicken coop. Once in a while she's even caught a fleeting glimpse of the OC and Britboy. But best of all, she's had lots of cuddle time with that beautiful baby girl.

There's also an unconfirmed report circulating that she huffed and puffed her way to the top of a mountain in Wales. It may just be a wild rumor, but you know what they say ---"No smoke without a fire." And she is, after all, the acknowledged conqueror of Croagh Patrick.

The same Mollybawn has been spotted roaming around downtown Oxford; gasping in awe at the beautiful architecture and the plantings and flowers in the various college gardens; marveling at the multitude of spires soaring up around her; nipping in occasionally to the quiet oasis of a chapel to silently give thanks for her many blessings; soaking up the history and stories of the place like one who's been lost in the desert; she's been seen strolling in the town's beautiful Botanic Gardens and been swallowed up in marvelous bookstores where she's had to remind herself that the very same books causing temptation are also available at home, without the weight and bother of carrying them there.

She has taken hundreds, nay, thousands, of photos which she promises to organize as soon as she gets home, even though she has yet to organize the collection from last summer, but optimism is key. It will get done.

As for "morning pages," mention them and her brow knits in puzzlement. Her memory is extremely short, like the tail of a Manx cat, and just as there is no hope that such a cat will ever grow a longer tail, there is little or no hope of her memory improving. But perhaps, when she returns to her natural habitat, the familiarity of the surroundings might jog her memory and she'll start up with Julia once again.

What England is this she wonders? Where the skies are blue and the sun shines all day? Her mind is awash with roosters and chickens, guinea fowl with their beautiful feathers and hare-brained ways, groaning baskets of home grown vegetables, Pippa the pig, all grown up from babyhood last summer, a quartet of black pigs obligingly lined up for a photo shoot; a small herd of woolly sheep, led by Riley the ram of impressive hornage, and two very territorial geese.....

Like those geese, she needs someone to gabble with.....And, as luck would have it, the Little Blister will be showing up in a couple of days. Ah Bliss! That Mollybawn, whoever she is, is one lucky lady.