A Day on the Prime Meridian

Greenwich. The name already stops me dead, after filling me with lo-o-nging for years. I just wanted to be there, stand on that zero point, where all space is measured from, in a way.

I first read 'Longitude', by Dava Sobel, a few years ago, but saw the Jeremy Irons TV show about it even longer ago. And living in Australia, a country which is founded in part on a reliable clock, just gives the place a very personal resonance for me. One of the earliest clocks was given to Captain Cook, on his trip to watch the Transit of Venus in ?1770 - he was considered a good seaman, someone you could trust with a clock, someone you could trust to take readings of longitude with it.

So, onto the train to Greenwich on a pale, bare Sunday morning. The Bean reading the Tube stops, the Pumpkin climbing the seats, me just humming at the prospect of making this pilgrimage on my personal map of the world.

Across the grounds of the Maritime College, into the Maritime Museum. Wowowowowow. Passing through the Titanic, opening cupboards on the marine uniforms, the Pumpkin wondering where the person talking about their uniform got to before he could open the door to see them. Nelson's coat, complete with hole from the day he died. Maritime histories of slave movements, waves of migrations in red arrows around the globe. My journey is part of one of those red arrows too. Shiny propellors, ship decks, a lovely cafe ( I could paint my walls that colour, stand a palm like this in my house!) and a playground - what more could we want. A toilet, poor Pumpkin has the trots, the same intense kind which Bean had over Christmas in Stuttgart, cramping. I get snapped with a statue of Captain Cook, only right. We toil on up the hill, to the Observatory. I feel I've reached a summit. More toilet stops.

And then, weaving with my boys and the queues, past the telescopes, the rooms inside, to the octagonal observing room, the living quarters and the clocks themselves. It IS a pilgrimage: I pay silent respects, and could cry for how moved I am to be with them: H1, H2, H3. The Bean is fascinated by a great interactive display, the Pumpkin heavy in my arms. I sit in the semi-gloom, the Pumpkin sleeps, the Bean opens and shuts doors, I reflect on this journey to this point in time. It is something I wanted, not about them, but made the more precious to be doing it with my two treasures, made so far away, over on 171 or so, not 0 as here. I feel triumphant as we ask another tourist to snap us right on the line, our feet on the Sydney point. We made it! Maybe the ancient mariners felt like this when they thought they'd fall off, get lost, run aground - and then didn't.

A loud, freezing, BRILLIANT high point racing on the ferry back to Tower Bridge. The boys screaming at the loud rushing water, me snapping, laughing, roaring at what IS possible for a mother to do with her young boys, at where it's possible to BE. Away upriver, along the old wharves, past the docks, past the new Canary Wharf stockbroker sheds, along the way they came back in after sailing bout the world, there's the Tower Bridge, the Gherkin, the Tower of London.

Did I tell you boys, I nearly fell out of a window there, before I was even two? The circle turns. The day ends with more Tube travel, a show - Marianne Dreams, more Tube travel, dinner with friends, a hooge day, but wonderful life.

A Day Alone

I'm on a bus all day today, from 10am to 4pm, across the top of Spain. I've got water, food, a book, maybe half a dozen words in Spanish.

Then I'll catch a train over the border, get to Biarritz airport, collect my husband off the plane, after he's finished a run of night shifts, and drive: in a hire car, on the wrong side of the road, in the dark, all the way back to Celorio, near Llanes, and our holiday will really start!

The boys meanwhile, are at our house, overlooking the Atlantic, a Spanish holiday house. The house has a lovely garden, parking, two bedrooms upstairs, two down, a kitchen fitted out with all sorts of stuff including an electric spaghetti fork, a fireplace, and the view over the sea! Lovely, very glad to have it. The boys will have a whole day with my cousin and her family, a beach day. I was going to take Alex on the bus because, at 7, he's a big step up for her, with her 2 kiddos, who are a) more peaceful and b) younger, almost 3 and 5. But they talked it over, and I'm off alone. What a treat, even though I fret.

I think of Race Around the World, and this is not it. But I'd love that degree of adventure, race, with one other person. And settle on the bus. So I look out at the summer orchards of fruit trees, sparkling coastline with hills rising straight off the coast, one timber Spanish house after another, one town after another. And read.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville. I brought it, to read about the Hawkesbury River - where I celebrated my 40th, spent a week on the same river. A book with a new perspective on Aboriginal history in Australia, but a writer who knows her words! I could see the gum trees there, as I looked over the gum trees by the side of the road in Spain - they're more spindly, smaller here. I could see the river, feel the anguish of early Australia, the endless journeys. Feel the heat, the sense of others gone before, feel a deep understanding of this book and its country. Not a strange book to me at all. Which it might be to others in Europe reading it.

And I was glad to be here, right side up, this side, not that remote, harsh, mysterious far side of our globe. Odd. I thought I'd get homesick reading the book. Instead, I grew calmer, didn't fret so much about this big day on the bus, needing to find a connecting bus in Bilbao and then the train at Irun to France. This, I can do.

The View From My Window 1

I love it here. Out of every window, there's a different spire to be seen - the Red Abbey, St Finbarrs and St Nicholas. The density of housing, of history just outside, the quiet of this place is just exactly what we came for.

Someone must have been watching on our whole journey into this flat in Cove Street, one street down from the river Lee, right in the middle of Cork! Just enough room for all of us, and the minimal stuff we brought. It's odd to move in and not own the linen, kitchen stuff, furniture - yet call it ours now. In all our moves, it's never been as easy as this.

St Nicholas is my favourite, out the kitchen window, only about 50m away. There's a floral reclining armchair ( I know I know, but here's to the beauty of a fully-furnished flat) positioned with a small table just so, so that when I sink back with a book, I can see straight up to Nicholas. He's there as I work in the kitchen too, we're forming a solid, quiet relationship. The pic shows kitchen tap, window and Nicholas; this is taken from said chair.

Barbara Kingsolver's book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is absolutely wonderful: phwoar can she write, I love the format, with contributions from her husband and daughter too. Makes me laugh out loud, weep tears of recognition and read to anyone at any occasion! How does spaghetti grow! Strange to be reading a book about feeding a family from your own garden, now that I've just left mine, but inspirational. This food-theme is going to be big this year - local, fresh, high quality. And I've every intention of starting it all up again once we go back: the compost will be great, hope the avocado tree makes it!

And out the door, we've found the chemist, the corner shop with newspapers, phone top-up machine and friendly faces, the local pub, the internet shop we can use to print letters, as there's no printer here with us.

UPDATE: By February, the Bean is allowed to go down and buy milk by himself, returning with a HUGE smile, the correct change and maybe a packet of Actimel yoghurt drinks! "I worked out that I had enough if I only got the 4-pack!"