Back in the big country

One week on, and I've forgotten what it feels like to hate rain. Samuel Beckett once wrote a play about waiting for rain (spoiler alert: there is no rain). Some days it's pure blue for miles. Other days, cotton wool clouds congeal overhead, then vanish.

Bat country. 

Only a week on, and I've relearned that ancient truth that the devil lives in dust.

By day, roadrunners check garden hoses for snake-like qualities and wild turkeys scuttle about in the rainless dust, doing whatever it is that wild turkeys do to pass the time.

At night bats fly round the windmill - yes - there is a windmill. A bright pearl button moon rises over the cliffs surrounding the valley, illuminating cottonwood skeletons along the river and leaving naked the actions of jackrabbits and ghosts.

At night I listen for the familiar scream of coyotes from my youth, and the howl La Llorona from my childhood nightmares. But both been quiet this week.

In fact everything is very, very quiet. London feels as far away as the Milky Way. I'm finding it difficult to remember that I was born here.

It is absolutely wonderful to be around family again, and to be welcomed into a lovely home built of sturdy adobe walls, where wood burning stoves dream quietly of winter in the corners. I've always wanted a home with turquoise window frames to ward off the blues.

Waiting. 

The girls have adapted to the new climate like desert fish to water. They still wear their wellies, though now it is to protect against the ills of tumbleweed stickers and rattlesnake bites.

I could sure use a nice pint of bitter. But the Foreign and Commonwealth Office did warn me that pubs would be a bit thin on the ground these parts. 

One week on. Much to come