How out of touch can we be?

While I remain lucid, I'll jot down the reasons why I'm here. Later, I can look back and laugh. I will need laughter then, when the Tiger daughter with her sad unsettled ways has completely scrambled my brain or bashed it to banana mush.

1. Money. Bugger. It barely featured in our discussions. In fact, on the household balance of things, we might even make a loss. How incompetent is that?

2. Marriage. A chance to start again. I think there is a husband here somewhere. In the office. Now I catch a glimpse of him, I find he is quite grumpy. He stares mournfully back at me with a kind of sufferance.

3. Family fantasy. How foolish we were! Parent addled, drunk on Skype, we talked how our children would scamper away on tropical paths, returning to us happy, glowing with excitements, telling us tales of striped lizards and scarlet flowering plants. No comment.

4. Health. A man can only travel round the globe so many times before he drops off the end of it, exhausted. I imagined that by staying put, slowing pace, one might enjoy decent health. His flight out of here is in two weeks.

5. Experience. What is the point of facing opportunities, and not taking them? What is the point of saying, better stay on the safe side? Better to live than not.

6. Education. Aha! Here you are, my elusive god! I imagined how I could hunt you down under frog bellies, up the stem of tropical plants, in the rocks of mountains. You would accompany my delighted home educated children on all our outings, in our everyday. Now, where are you hiding?

I am not sure which one of these I realised today, but I walked with the children to the beach and back. Tiger tentatively dipped her toes in the water, collected shells and laid them out, solemnly, one by one, on a beachside table. Shark swam and paddled, and Squirrel built a walled city made of sand, called it Fairy Castle, then decorated it with bright yellow flowers.