Big city. Bright lights. No internet.

“I can’t let him go. I can’t. There must be some way to bring him back. Oh, I can’t think about this now! I’ll go crazy if I do! I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? Tara! Home. I’ll go home. And I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all… tomorrow is another day!” (Scralett in ‘Gone with the Wind’)

Pat and I were talking about the past. School time. The panic in the kitchen in the morning, for everybody to have breakfast, to get this all important copy in the little shop on Dorset Street on the way to the bus stop, have you got money, headphones (you couldn’t get onto a bus without headphones!), where are my headphones, did you take them out of my bag, the letter to the teacher, getting the homework book signed off, all within 10 minutes, we have to leave, we are late, I have to go to the toilet. It’s a wonder we ever managed to leave the house and get to this bus in town that would take them to school on the South Side.

Those were the good times. But only now. Then, I didn’t always realize how happy we all were.

Pádraig today had vomited just before we arrived. Why, oh why? He was stressed by the whole affair, the suctioning that had preceded the little incident, and the clean up operation that followed. So there was no pudding today. BUT, there will be a full day of speech valve tomorrow if he is able to take it. And then another. And then around the clock. Which would be a big step forward. So fingers crossed. Never think about the set-backs. Never look at what went wrong. Never wonder about what if. Τα πάντα ρει one wise Greek philosopher once found out, everything moves, flows, changes all the time. Nothing stays the same. Tomorrow, nothing will be like today. Scarlett was right: After all… tomorrow is another day! And in every panic, in every disaster, in every tragedy, there are good things, there is hope, there are steps forward. Even if it’s hard to realise that at times. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

I am in London tonight and tomorrow, giving a presentation and talk at an event at LondonMet University. Hope to get internet back in my room, windows wide open, unbearable heat, noise and lights of the big city everywhere. Back early on Friday morning. Sleep won’t come easily… neither does the internet… there must be millions of ETs around here, trying to ‘phone home’ on Skype!