I spent time huddled in a corner of the deck, a cloak wrapped round fending off the damp of the ocean. Guy took his share of the watch in the dark hours. Just he, Davey and a skeleton crew whilst the others yawned, snored and filled the spaces around me with their odour.
Okay folks, time for some lessons in pronunciation. I need your help.
How do you pronounce Gisborne?
'Guy's too amused...'
Is it Gisborne as in ‘Borne’?
or
Is it Gisborne as in ‘Gisbn’?
Over to you as Guy’s too amused by it all.
Communication; it takes two. Stay with me and I’ll explain.
Today we took the boat once again to Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) Island. A glorious day, and where we chose to moor, so calm that one could barely tell where water ended and land began. 
The family left the boat and decided to walk along the coastal track to the lagoon and bay where we wished to swim. I had brought my kayak with me and decided that I would paddle round to the bay. Maria Island has snakes here and there and I figured I’d rather take my chances with the water than snakes as anyone who has read this blog knows I have a snake-phobia.
Cousins? He jests, surely. Whatever he had been going to answer, this was not what I had expected to hear. I thought of Vasey the first time I had met him in Le Mans.
'But he looks nothing like you...'
Yesterday, Aimee Salter posted a link to JK Rowling’s speech at Harvard in 2008. 
Both my husband and I watched it on the computer. It’s a compelling speech on so many levels, and I urge anyone who is interested in ‘LIFE’ to watch it.
Things that relax you… are the most perfect things in one’s life. Eclectic things: waves shushing in and out,
a light breeze blowing through the leaves of a tree, the sounds of snowy silence, a dog asleep under one’s hand. There are sinful things as well: chocolate, a good wine, even medication when one has a serious ache or pain. But then there is massage: preferably a Bowen massage, the pressure of kind fingers, ambient music playing just within earshot, warm towels being laid over one’s body.
Something warmed my back and as I stretched, my shoulder was gently shaken. Through sleepy lids I could see the sun streaming into the chamber. Guy’s voice spoke just loud enough to push the last threads of slumber from my consciousness. ‘Ysabel, wake you. It’s time to dress and break your fast. The boat leaves in an hour.’
Sometime ago, way back in October 2010, I wrote a quick post about it being . . . ‘almost summer.’ I love the song by Billy Thorpe and I swore it would become my anthem.
Well it did indeed become my song! Here I am at the little beachside cottage and I’m revelling in the sun and the sound of waves and walking through the water with the dogs. Tonight we’re having a BBQ with friends who also live by the beach and we contributing all the fresh stuff we’ve grown from the garden: snowpeas, fresh peas, Kipfler potatoes, mint, baby carrots. We’ll throw red and white wine into the basket, and beer and shall sit around their wood-fired BBQ into the darkling hours and chat about this and that.
I’m having a holiday, friends. Haven’t had one for a year and so I’m off to renew my relationship with the ocean and things nautical. 
I’ll be in and out through our summer, but Mesmered is taken a small non-post break till January 1st, 2011, when the first post will be the new instalment of The Sheriff’s Collector.
(This next part of The Sheriff’s Collector is especially dedicated to MG, from Fly High, without whose friendship my love of all the series of Robin Hood would have been much less fun.)
The pain I felt as my ruined life rattled around me like a thunderstorm was stupendous, but Guy was there . . . as he had been every step of the way, and once again I let him take the pain away. I lifted my right hand to his and covered it as it lay on my jaw-line. There are times in life when one just wants to forget about concerns and cares. To ignore the shouted whisper of caution in the ear . . .
