Beautiful swirly colours in tiny glass globes. Red. White. Blue. Green. Yellow. I’ve always loved marbles. There’s something about them that fascinate me, that make me hold them in my hand and stare at them over and over again, even though I’ve seen them a thousand times. Maybe it’s my repressed childhood manifesting; I never had any marbles as a kid, my father was always afraid my siblings and I would swallow them and choke to death. Y has a collection of marbles. He keeps them in a chocolate tin box at the bottom of one of his many drawers. I’ll bet he’s forgotten about them.
I’m supposed to – nay, wanted to – blog about the past week. It has been undoubtedly one of the best weeks ever. But I have no words. I don’t know where to start. Instead, here I am jabbering away about marbles.
When friends come from not-so-far and spend a week in your house, and you have such a good time you feel like you’re on holiday with them even though you still show up at work so you can’t be on holiday, yet at the same time you don’t feel like they’re on holiday because they’re not tourists and you don’t do touristy things and you don’t feel touristy and you don’t take pictures because you keep forgetting the camera, I guess that’s when you know you’ve got something different. And when they need to leave you wish they would stay forever, even though you know everybody has to go back to reality. It’s more than just about having a good time. It’s about knowing you’ve found family.
I have never laughed so much and so hard for too long. I’ve also never embarrassed myself on video before but that’s something we shall not talk about. You were missed before you even got on that bus. Thanks for something really special this past week. Like pretty marbles, each moment, each conversation, each experience will go into the chocolate tin, which I shall keep in my topmost drawer, to be looked at over and over. And you know how much I love chocolate. And marbles. I’m going to be greedy and hoard them, and woe betide anybody who threatens my swirly reds, blues, greens, whites and yellows.
