Sunday - Travelling back
Podgorica Airport smells of smoke. I am wearing my favourite summer travelling outfit- long black cotton shirt and strappy bright vest, with a wide belt, short-sleeved cardigan and gladiator sandals. On this journey it earns me a seat in Podgorica’s tiny airport café (miraculous), a free upgrade to business class (delightful) and a wink from the pilot (mostly useless), but fails to affect the larger problem of not seeing my son for another month.
The day is blustery and blessedly overcast. The promise of rain was always the most anticipated event of August here.
I walk across the tarmac trailing wind-whipped clothes and sadness. On the plane I can feel the tug in my mind (like a pager buzzing at the back of my skull) which indicates a child awake and looking for me. The call vibrates with an urgency that dents the heart. I watch the patterns of rain on the tarmac and long for him as palpably as land-locked mariners yearn for the sea.
On the Ljubljana-London leg my inablity to refuse the abudnant and delicious Business Class wine and my famously low tolerance for alcohol combine to comatise me. I wake when the seatbelt sign pings on and the window reveals a truly impressively dense cloud cover over the UK.
From the air it's beautiful, and infinite - stretching out in each direction as far as the eye can see. It's a cloudscape gilded with sunlight and painted in Van Gogh's brushstrokes- vast and mysterious and lovely.
There's a strong headwind, whipping wisps of cloud past the window. The buzzing call in my mind is gone. I shut my eyes and beam a message back - an image of white clouds, and the feeling of being wrapped in kisses.
Separation is hard. All night long I dream restless ghost dreams - tangled pathways in a moonlit wood, rain on the sea.
The day is blustery and blessedly overcast. The promise of rain was always the most anticipated event of August here.
I walk across the tarmac trailing wind-whipped clothes and sadness. On the plane I can feel the tug in my mind (like a pager buzzing at the back of my skull) which indicates a child awake and looking for me. The call vibrates with an urgency that dents the heart. I watch the patterns of rain on the tarmac and long for him as palpably as land-locked mariners yearn for the sea.
On the Ljubljana-London leg my inablity to refuse the abudnant and delicious Business Class wine and my famously low tolerance for alcohol combine to comatise me. I wake when the seatbelt sign pings on and the window reveals a truly impressively dense cloud cover over the UK.
From the air it's beautiful, and infinite - stretching out in each direction as far as the eye can see. It's a cloudscape gilded with sunlight and painted in Van Gogh's brushstrokes- vast and mysterious and lovely.
There's a strong headwind, whipping wisps of cloud past the window. The buzzing call in my mind is gone. I shut my eyes and beam a message back - an image of white clouds, and the feeling of being wrapped in kisses.
Separation is hard. All night long I dream restless ghost dreams - tangled pathways in a moonlit wood, rain on the sea.