New beginnings.

Last July we had a visitor from Down Under. Brisbane, to be precise, and it just so happened that at the time it was like summer!

Tim, pictured here with Stephen, had come for an interview in Birmingham for a job with Scripture Union. http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/YouthEncounter/41589.id

It is as though a wheel had come full circle as Alan, our younger son, went to work with SU in Queensland in 2003 for just under a year. He stayed with Tim, who was SE Queensland co-ordinator. Tim along with his wife and 2 and a half year old daughter, arrived yesterday in London.

They drive to Brum today. Pancake Day.

Pancake Day was the day we arrived in Australia in 2004 to stay with Tim and see Alan, for a few weeks. Alan made us pancakes that evening!! I have photos of him tossing them in the air! A family tradition here, and also nationwide.

The job Tim will be involved in is one which Matt would have loved. It is promoting better relationships between Muslims and Christian youth.

he would've been so excited about this project!

So for us there is a sense of delicious continuity here.

A kind of what goes round, comes round!

But Tim and family have left beautiful sunny blue-skied warm Brisbane for the biting cold of this English winter, which has seemed to last and last this year.

A lot to get used to.

A life lived outdoors for a life of warmer clothing and central heating, and lets face it, in Tim's own words yesterday

" London is so cold and grey and gloomy today - a long way from the blue, bright heat of Brisbane. Glad to be here and gearing up for drive to Birmingham tomorrow."

And this morning, it was lighter earlier, and I watched as the sun began to creep over the horizon through the trees. Eventually pouring in through the bedroom window.

Blue sky day for Tim.

I heard a blackbird sing................and I thought, well he thinks spring is around the corner, even though we cannot see much evidence of it yet.

It was encouraging on a day when I'm streaming with the cold virus kindly given to me by my Timelord husband!

Stops me feeling too sorry for myself.

And hopefully I will be able to make myself pancakes at teatime!

Timelord is not a fan!!

Looking back, looking forward........ Birthdays February 2010

The beginning of February for us is one of a flurry of
birthdays.
Friends and family. Six in all from the 4th to the 18th.
What to buy? What to send?
This resulted in us going to the Touchwood Centre in Solihull, early in the month, for a "once in a blue moon" shop!
We are not shoppers, preferring other pastimes.
Timelord calls the place Torchwood, I wonder why?! He really thought it was so named! Must run in his Timelord veins.
It was an absolutely gloriously sunny afternoon, but also extremely cold.
The sunset afterwards in the cold blue sky, just beginning to have a sprinkling of stars, was amazing.
It's hard to believe that this was our 4th year of birthdays without Matt.
The first of those February's was spent in stressful anticipation of the trial at Stafford Crown Court of the lorry driver who was instrumental in the deaths of Matt and Chris. Later in the month we scattered Matt's ashes at the Lizard.
It also snowed very hard then too.
Seemed to match all our moods.
But this year we actually enjoyed ourselves and laughed a lot and had a lot of fun. It was the first time in 4 years where there was a sense of life returning. It was the same at Christmas and New Year. A new sensation. A sense of, and I almost daren't say it, anticipation of what the year can bring, instead of another year knowing we had to somehow go from January to December, and then heave a sigh of relief........

We seem to have been in a land like Narnia, where it was "always winter and never Christmas".
Well, I think I can sense a thaw.............
This new sensation brings it own peculiar thoughts.
As Matt is frozen in time, and we move forwards, and our lives pick up a new rhythm, is it as though we forget?
No, and he would have been pleased that we enjoyed our birthdays.
I have discovered that writing about him, talking about him, looking at his photo, and listening to him talk on the videos we have of him, we take him with us.
I know I felt at first that in time he would somehow fade, and I would have to work hard to cling on to him.
But I can see him as large as life, laughing, smiling, pensive, and I carry him in my heart.
Yes, I missed him phoning me on my birthday and saying "Happy Birthday mum" and going out together as a complete family for a meal. I will always, always miss him. That pain is forever.
And as Matt once wrote on a postcard he sent to us, we will see him again, in time.