Dear Diary; Now is all we have

Anadi and I have continued our weekend practise since we were locked down of wandering about…. 

So on Saturday we set off up the road – first stop ‘Matcha Beyond’ to purchase my new ‘favourite almond croissant’ – onward to Pret for Anadi to pick up his Swedish meat balls…!

And then to the Duke of York square for coffee from Partridges… 

Our breakfast complete, we sat on the grass in the hot hot sun, the artisan fare stalls now set up all around us on small the running track beside the square….

After we’d eaten our picnic we meandered around the track looking at all the delicious food and drink, stopping to buy a young coconut and drink its juice… ‘Where are they from?’ I asked the stall holder… ‘Costa Rica’ he replied…

The last time I drank coconut juice fresh from the coconut was when Anadi and I actually were in Costa Rica… It was the end of 2013… We had set off as nomads on December 6th a year exactly to the day we had met…

Costa Rica was our first – very eventful stop! Within twelve days Anadi had lost his business, and five days later we almost lost our lives in a rip tide…

I remember realising we were in trouble… We’d been running along a huge expanse of golden sand with the waves crashing beside us – not another soul in sight – and so we hadn’t seen the sign on the path above the beach that warned of dangerous rip tide currents… 

We had splashed into the sea in our running kit to simply jump about and play in the huge waves – we weren’t even swimming – when suddenly I realised there was nothing beneath our feet any more and that we were being swiftly carried out…

‘We’re in trouble’ I said to Anadi… A surge of panic rose in me ‘Help me’ I called to him, just as a seven foot wave crashed into him and sent him tumbling away from me…

I relaxed, ‘Please help me’ I said silently as I surrendered to the possibility of dying, a fleeting thought flashed through me that I had ruined some people’s Christmas by dying now on December 22nd…!

I then heard Anadi calling out ‘Use the waves, swim with the waves, use the waves…’ 

And that is what we did… We used the waves, and both of us strong swimmers, managed to eventually reach the shore… Utterly exhausted we leant on one another for what seemed an age – and then we walked slowly up the beach to sit and sit and sit until we were able to very gently jog home…

We were subsequently told by any local we cared to retell our story too, that had we gone with the rip tide, it would have shot us out to sea 200 metres and that then we could have swum the mile along the coast to a safe bit of beach…! Hmmmm! 🙂

On December 25th Anadi proposed to me…

The first 19 days of nomadic life had set the scene for an incredible next five years…. 

And now we are here… 

Wandering about in London Town instead of far flung places… The richness of life revealing itself from the inside out in every step we take. 

Glorious days with Anadi…

We continued our wandering past Harrods into Hyde Park and onto Kensington Gardens for another coffee and – by now, lunch – stop to re fuel, where we watched folk playing bowls, table tennis and actual tennis…

After lunch we wandered on down the path, and I ran my hands over a familiar plant; ‘ummm’… I smelt my fingers… 

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember’, I quoted from Shakespeare…

The stories of our lives; now just stories – our nomadic life now a chapter all of its own… Experienced, lived fully and now just a part of the story of our life…

Fun to remember, in the now…

But now is now, now is even better, because now is here 

Now is all we have

Remember to live it fully, pray, love, remember to live it fully.