Distraction

“…Weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)…”

Duino elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke

I hope that you will indulge me – over the next few days – if I seem a little distracted. The Kickass Canada Girl arrives at Heathrow in about 2 hours from now for her first visit to these shores since she went back to Victoria at the beginning of March. Understandably – as you might imagine – my mind is elsewhere…

She will be here for just over a week – including, as it happens, the Jubilee weekend – before returning to Canada following her citizenship ceremony a week today. This might seem a long – and expensive – journey to make for such a brief – though important – event, but such is the strangeness of life in these days that very little seems exceptionally unusual. We live in interesting times!

Now – if you will excuse me – I have a drama class to teach, and then I will head for the airport…