The answer is 42, give or take

Big questions come in all sizes. Puzzling over whether to have French mustard with your chicken ‘n’ chips ‘n’ salad, say, can sometimes cause you to temporarily stop and ponderously scratch your chin just as much as thinking about if there is life after death.

The big question I took away to Egypt with me was should I make the move back to the barn a permanent one. The trial period of living here had gone well - much better than I expected in fact - and I had more or less made up my mind to say yes before I even set foot on the plane. But I still held the decision pending, wanting to have the opportunity of time and distance (both physical and metaphorical) to reflect. After all, 18 months and a whole lot of trauma on from the break up, opting to move back to live separately and independently from but alongside and under the same roofs as the ex was not something to be decided on the toss of a coin.

Whilst in Egypt, I didn’t think about it much at all or not consciously anyway. I was content to let my mind-scape scene shifters shuffle about in the background doing their thing and to present me with their recommendation when it was ready. A bit like the giant monolithic mega-computer, Deep Thought, in the Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, except hopefully more usefully conclusive than the answer 42.

And the micro-chaps in white mini boiler suits that tunnel through my neurons and synapses and buff up my grey matter didn’t let me down. I have my answer, and the answer is yes. All I need to do now is sort out the practical stuff to make it so.

I left work early this afternoon and drove over to my little house by the seaside to pick up my post. The approach road to the island is a wide black dual carriageway. It cuts across the salt flats like a fat string of liquorice before soaring up and over the elegantly curved bridge that spans the strip of water that separates the island from the mainland. The marshes are covered with tufts of coarse grasses upon which benevolent cows and sheep graze sleepily and eke out a sufficient if meagre diet. There are numerous informal lakes and ditches that come and go with the rain, home to tens of thousands of wading and water dwelling birds. That this landscape is as rare and precious as the rainforests probably escapes their notice as they feed and breed and squabble and groom.

I spotted something as I joined this main road. A bright red metallic helium balloon was bobbing up and down at the edge of one of the fields. It was heart-shaped, perhaps a Valentine gift from a shiny-eyed lover or an escapee from a birthday celebration. Its string must have slipped through someone’s fingers in a moment of clumsiness and was now snagged in the rough hedge. Perhaps whoever it was had watched the balloon float up out of reach until it disappeared away into the sky. Maybe they’d stood on tip toe or jumped up and down in an attempt to save it and bring it back to earth. But helium is lighter than air and so the balloon had no choice but to rise up and away and out of their grasp forever.

There was nothing in my mail box as it turned out, except for an appeal from the RSPCA and a catalogue of clothes for women of a certain age that my mum must have ordered. I added them to the recycling pile and picked up some clean bed sheets and my vacuum cleaner before driving back to the barn. My little house by the seaside is starting to feel less like my home now as my stuff gradually migrates. By the end of next month, I’ll have moved out completely; later on, someone else will move in and make it their place. For them and for me, I hope it’s the right decision.