The Small Cry

I have just come home from the trip taking Cowboy to the airport for his flight home. The airport run is always difficult for me. I usually battle to stay chipper and cheerful whilst the tears rise in my throat.

This time was made worse by the fact that the norovirus struck me last night, and I had next to no sleep all night, had to run up and down to the bathroom several times to be sick, and today I am shivery and aching and the thought of food makes me feel faint.

My dad offered to drive us to the airport, and I slouched on the back seat of the car while Cowboy sat in the front, and I managed to hold it all together until we had to walk in to the terminal and find his check in desk. Mostly, that was because I was concentrating so hard on not feeling like I was about to die that I didn't have brain-space to consider crying.

We don't do long, drawn-out goodbyes. Once I'd got him safely checked in and his bag dropped off, all he had to left to do was get through security. A quick kiss, a hug, and he said "See you later." I forced a smile and said "Yep. See you soon." Then I babbled about letting me know when he lands, and have a safe journey, none of which were things I needed to say. They were just an attempt to prolong his being here.

It's been a lame ten days on paper: both of us were ill more than once, and to compound matters, our plan to have a romantic get-away and make up for er... "lost time" was scuppered by a very unglamorous affliction that struck me, and we were limited to cuddling. Only very little cuddling occurred, because either he or I were contagious, and neither of us can sleep well if we're cuddling. The weather was miserable, and Christmas wasn't as glittery and fabulous as we had imagined.

It made no difference to me. I loved him being here. I don't love that he has gone again. As I always do after leaving him at the airport, or him leaving me at the airport, I have a small cry. It's about the only way to deal with it.

Seasonal thoughts

Christmas Day has come and gone, and as with everything in life, it wasn't exactly all to plan. Cowboy was struck down with germs and spent all of Christmas Day in bed with a fever. My niece ricocheted around the house with luminous green snot pouring out of her nose and a very productive cough - which I appear to have now caught.

We ate food, we played Monopoly, we opened gifts, and eventually I went to bed in the guest room whilst Cowboy sweated out the last of his illness without me. We have bailed out to a family bolthole in Cornwall, where we are doing very little - I am coughing up my lungs and he is enjoying not needing to get dressed today.

I took a few minutes to watch the glorious sunset this afternoon, the sun slipping into the ocean and even seeing the elusive green flash.

I love to come down here, to the very end of the country, and perhaps I will come back here after the New Year and spend some time alone. It is a good spot to work on a book, or a business project, or both.

It's also getting around to the time of year when we all start thinking about the ways we want to change our lives, and make those over-ambitious resolutions. In her Christmas speech, Her Majesty The Queen talked about reflection, and how important it is to take time to look at one's life and think about what there is to be thankful for, in the past, the present, and the future. She has a good point.

January sales and the festive season encourage us to consume, to eat all the food, buy all the good deals, want all the things, be at all the parties, have all the fun. Didn't get what you wanted for Christmas? Buy it for yourself in the sales.

I shy away from all that these days. All I wanted for Christmas, I got: my Cowboy right here where I can touch him; most of my family together for a few days; a cozy nook with a warm fire and a spot to put my feet up.

I hope all of you were similarly lucky :)

And, breathe

He made it. Despite a late take-off from Seattle and my paranoia that he would miss his connecting flight, Cowboy is here. Whilst he was chirpy enough when I picked him up from the airport at around 10am this morning, he has crashed this afternoon and is sleeping off the journey while the cup of tea I made for him goes cold beside the bed.


Over the last few days, I've harboured some tension that I have now been able to release. The PVP was excessive. I worried that travel disruption would steal some of the time we have together over the holidays. I worried that his feelings might have changed. I worried that my feelings might have changed. I worried that Christmas would become an awkward festival of realising I'd made a huge mistake, a catalogue of huge mistakes.

And then he walked through the doors of International Arrivals at the airport, his guitar on his back, and he smiled at me and kissed me and hugged me tightly, and I forgot all about my absurd worries.

I love him.

The Little Cowboy Bar

I learned recently about a fire that ripped through a small bar in a very small town in Montana. The bar was called The Little Cowboy, and it was in Fromberg, MT.

The Little Cowboy Bar is where the wranglers (Cowboy included) would take us tourists after a day's riding at the dude ranch where Cowboy and I met. At this bar, I learned what Mountain Dew tasted like. I learned what a 'Shake-a-Day' is, and even played a few rounds, despite the stern sign that the Shake-a-Day was for locals only.

I spent hours looking at the photographs of the rodeo stars of years gone by, and I pored over the impressive collection of belt buckles, pipes, boots, saddles, letters, photographs, preserved beetles and snake skins, clothing, hundreds and hundreds of items that the bar's former owner, now manager, Shirley Smith had collected over the years. Her museum had a tattered guestbook filled with names of people from all over the world. I signed it, promising I'd be back.

The Little Cowboy is where I learned a game that involved clenching a quarter between my buttocks, walking ten feet across the floor and trying to drop the quarter into a shot glass on the floor. It's where Cowboy looked at me, my first day on the ranch, while I contemplated my life and said, "You're interesting, you know that?"

The Little Cowboy is where I tried on his spurs and paraded around the deck to make them clink and chime like in the old westerns, it's where I stood in the irrigation channel in the sun to soak my boots which were too tight.

It's where I listened to Shirley tell us about the Little People of the Pryor Mountains, she showed us her documentary about them and her photographs with their strange discolouration which she thinks was to do with the spirits up in the mountains. She told us about putting cigarettes in the little gift bags which the local school children had wanted to leave for the Little People - tobacco is a customary tribute to the Little People. She told me that, yes, if you go back to where you leave your tributes three days later, they will be gone. She told me about people she knew who had seen the Little People. She gave me shivers down my spine with her stories.

Shirley in her museum. Image from Billings Gazette

The fire started by accident one afternoon last week, and quickly destroyed the building and most of what was in it. I feel a keen sense of loss. Shirley's collection was so precious - not much of it appeared valuable at first glance, it was odds and ends from ordinary lives of local people, but the more time I spent in the museum in the back room, the more I loved these ordinary treasures. I wish now that I had taken photographs of the place and what I saw inside. I didn't take any, not a single one.

Image from Billings Gazette

Now, there is not much left of this little place. The front wall, which was covered in the brands of local ranchers, may have survived, but the inside is wrecked and most of the collection with it. This bar in a sleepy small town was once named as one of the best bars in America. I hope that it will recover to some extent, that a new collection might be started, and that it will be one of the best bars in America all over again.

My heart goes out to Shirley and the people of Fromberg.

Read the Billings Gazette report on the fire here.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

On Friday, I joined some of my friends to watch The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at the IMAX cinema in London. I'd never been to the IMAX before, so I was rather excited about that part. Admittedly, I watched part 1 of The Hobbit trilogy on a plane, and wasn't all that grabbed by it, so I wasn't as excited as I could have been about the film itself. Back in the day, my friends and I would queue outside the cinema for hours before it opened so that we could watch the first screening of each Lord of the Rings film.

Hobbit 2 was enjoyable enough. It was a little disjointed, a lot of running hither and thither; running from this, running to that, running around looking for the other. I rather wanted everybody to stop running and sit down and have a cup of tea for longer than five minutes.

Still, I had one request of the film, which it more than delivered. I wanted more dragon than the first film. Smaug was big and gorgeous and had plenty of screen time.

I loved how he flowed across the gigantic screen, how his chest glowed like embers before he breathed fire across everything.

Mostly I loved the look in his eyes when confronted with the biggest gold item he'd ever seen. Adoration, delight, greed. I loved how he shook molten gold from his scales and it rained coins.

There was another unexpected love from this film. He came on screen, and having forgotten the book which I read some 18 years ago, I stared, open-mouthed. Who is that?! Seriously. Who was he? He was smoking hot.

Bard the Bowman. I don't really think he needs explaining. Just look at him.

It was a good romp of a film, it had some touching and funny moments, it was enjoyable. It was a little bit too long... If it had had more Bard, it might have been more tolerable.

In fact, it should have been called Bard, and been all about Bard. I look forward to more of him in the next film.

My Excessive Collections: Lip balm

When the weather changes, which is every single wretched day in England, I get the same problem. My lips become chapped, cracked, flaky and sore. Over the years I've learned that the only way to deal with this issue is to be excessively, obsessively prepared.

Behold my arsenal of lip balm (you might say I'd gone a bit "barmy/balmy"...! Sorry...).



Twelve might be excessive by some standards. That's why this is called My Excessive Collections. These are all completely necessary.

These two live by my bed, for those last-thing-at-night or first-thing-in-the-morning moments. Occasionally for those middle-of-the-night moments, but those are rare. There are two because I usually lose one down the back of my bedside table, so I need a backup at all times. Of the two, mango is my favourite.


This one lives in my handbag. I bought it in Walmart in Bellingham, WA, when I had a chapped lips crisis at the checkout, and it was right there next to the Hershey's chocolate and beef jerky. It has a zingy feel which Cowboy isn't sure about.


This one lives in my coat pocket. It has the added bonus of SPF 15, which makes it perfect for those surprise sunny days. It also tastes nice and is a good shape for applying.


This one used to live on my desk, when I had one, and now lives on my chest of drawers. It's not my favourite, the consistency is a little grainy. It used to live in my car, but melted on a hot day and dribbled everywhere. I let it solidify again and it's pretty much a last resort, but does give a good moisture hit.


I bought this one when I had a cold, and I actually used it to sooth and lubricate the skin on my nose. I associate vaseline with greasing my neck and armpits to stop my wetsuit from chafing on surfing holidays, so it's not really something I wanted to put on my lips, but an emergency chappage situation arose one day and I ended up using it. It was very pleasant. It lives on my dressing table.


I bought this one shortly after I'd used the previous one in an emergency - another emergency situation arose whilst I was out shopping, and this was near the tills. This one also lives on my dressing table, and is often applied just before I go out. I don't wear lipstick except on very special occasions, and this hint of colour is as close as I get to putting makeup on my lips.


I don't use this one often (No. 7 at Boots), only when I have a serious chappage situation. On occasion, my lips have flaked so badly I've been left with raw strips, and sometimes bleeding. For excessive moisturising, this is my go-to balm. It tastes bad, but it works well.


This one (Neal's Yard Remedies) lives in my car, because nothing distracts from good driving like dry lips. Always close at hand for a good application before setting off on a long journey, and there for emergencies when the handbag or coat are on the back seat and the M25 is not going anywhere. It's also robust enough to withstand the extremes of temperature in my car which come from a broken heater.


These three musketeers are often forgotten in the drawer. Lypsyl used to be my favourite balm, now it doesn't taste as good as I remember and the consistency is a bit gluey. These will probably end up living in Cowboy's pick-up so that when I find myself in there without warning, I'll at least have something to use.


I used to have a few more in the collection, but I've lost some, and I gave one of my favourites away to a friend who was in dire need of some balm. She was very appreciative.

Always be prepared.

Worlds apart

It's getting close to the time when Cowboy will be arriving in the UK for Christmas, so naturally there's a bit of PVP starting to kick in. I am restless and irritable, and scrabbling about for ways to make the days go quicker. It's harder to do that without uni or a job to take up the bulk of my time.

If I had my head in a sensible place, I'd be working on the businesses (mine, and Cowboy's) behind the scenes: adjusting websites, planning updates, drafting letters etc. My head being in an insensible place, I tend to drink a lot of tea and faff about.

Yesterday I joined one of my oldest friends for her birthday celebrations. I drove from the Oxfordshire countryside back to Tooting (where I could park for free as I still have my resident's permit), hopped on a bus to Clapham and wandered down Northcote Road. It was cold, but not bitter. I didn't wear gloves or a hat and I was fine.

We went to the pottery painting cafe and had tea and cake while we dabbed paint on to the various pieces of crockery on offer. I had to resist the teapot with a capacity of an entire gallon. I went for a more demure one pint mug.



The mug features a rope around the bottom, three emblems of London (pictured), a black and white cow (inaccurate, because Cowboy doesn't work with dairy cows, he works with beef cows, which are usually black Angus), a yellow horse (Sunshine) and a blue dog (Blue Dog).

I've never been artistically accomplished, and I'm hoping Cowboy will like it for the sentimental value and its generous tea capacity.

After our pottery escapades, we had a lovely dinner at The Breakfast Club (pie and mash, a side of mac and cheese, banoffee pie), and some drinks in the bar next door. On the way back to Tooting, I went past lovely shops and restaurants, and I wondered why I had left London. I drove back to the Oxfordshire countryside.

Cowboy messaged me from Montana, where he is taking some time out to see his family before he comes over here. All it said was: It hit -40 this morning.

That's in Fahrenheit, but it happens to be exactly the same temperature in Celsius. Minus forty. Minus forty degrees. What alien ice planet is he on?? Hoth?

The only suitable response I could come up with was: No thanks. No minus forty for me. In his little hometown I expect the wind is whipping across the prairie, and there aren't hundreds of lovely shops and restaurants to take refuge in.

I realise I have never been to the US when it's been cold. It worries me more than a little. I will need to invest in a space suit. I mean, in a really good coat.