Seeds are just enough

We are holidaying in our 'Scotland House' (as my boys call it) for a week. It is such a strange holiday because at the end of it we go home and Don has no job. And he needs one. We need money to live on and pay our bills until his course starts in September. I wonder that we even came away to have a holiday actually (!!). It is different than our usual windy and sunny and free-for-all-spend-a-thon. It is February and we are in Scotland so yeah, I hardly expected blue skies and sun. It is blue though, but freezing and damp. We are hesitant about spending money... wondering if this book or horse ride might mean no food at all next week. So it is a frugal holiday. Holiday on a shoestring. I can do that. It means we don't stop at the delicatessen and buy turkish flatbread with olives and sundried tomatos for lunch every day. It means I don't make my usual swoon into the lushous wool shop, falling in to a pile of rainbow dyed silk hanks and untagling notes from my walllet. It means I have to avert my nose as we pass the rank smelling cellar-like cheese shop with a the wonderous counters piled high with the soft palleted creamyness. The treasure-chest book stores; jewel like covers glinting in harsh winter light, faded yellow pages. Someone elses find this time.

But actually I don't care as much as I thought I might. We walked through a wood carpeted with snowdrps, water gushing, pulling us down to the sea shore. Piglets! Piglets the colour of my hair; warm balls of rust hiden in the trees and roots, trowelling back the earth. The giant gull perched on the roof of our car, too tame to be afraid of flapping boys, wanting a morsel of our salty fish lunch. Miles and miles of beach all to ourselves, sky and sand. I think everything is grey, then I look. And look. And the sea is green, up to here and then changes to the deepest blue. The rocks, the subtlest grey, merging with the sky which suddenly cracks open to a slice of blue. It is beautiful. I have my pile of soft wool here when I touch the capped heads of my sons. I see the pink when I see my own reflection after a day of hard (unused legs!) walking. I don't have the cheese but still there are spicy seeds drying out in the Aga. We have a giant bowl of eggs that I artfully placed on the counter at just that angle that looks abundant. I have enough. I have enough and today I don't want any more.