RIP little bees

Mum killed her bees sometime this month :( Starved them. She found them all huddled together, dead, with their heads embedded as far as they could into the wax, so desperately trying to get enough food.

They'd eaten the sugar water she'd put out for them a month ago, but they hadnt had the energy to convert it to food :( thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tiny little lives. Half a bucket full of little lives. Shame.. Thankfully dad's hive is still going strong. That would have been truly tragic. I had put my ear to the outside of the hives around Christmas time, when we had snow and could hear the new hive buzzing away. I guess they were buzzing, trying to keep warm and find food. Shaaaaaaame! :((((
Photo: Dad, so wonderfully, excitedly, proud in his brand new bee suit - 29 February 2008.
Is that significant? ...That it was 29th?

Dad had ordered his bees on the internet. How cool is that! At 82, I reckon that is seriously cool. They arrived by Royal Mail! Even more outrageously cool!

Dad poured over every piece of literature he could find on bees as the cancer took hold of first his lungs, and then his brain. The last time I went out there to the hive with him his coordination was gone and he lifted up the wrong layer... opening up the whole hive. But I wasnt scared. He wasnt scared either. We didnt use the bee suit or a smoker. What for? My brother was with us and stood back. I just drank in the rich moment.

I'd flown straight back from South Africa when I heard that something was not right. That they feared the cancer had spread. I got out the car and found a different man. He was awkward. His face changed. Strange. His speech jumbled. He pointed to some flowers and said... "Look... my bees!!" And sure enough... there they were.

Bless him. Thats the legacy he left mum.

Last summer she harvested our first 7 jars of the most delicious, delicately elderflower-scented honey. Honey from the gods ;)

The lavender that literally oozes with bees in the summer! Suffused in the most divinely heady aroma.

p.s. If dad hadnt died, he was all set to order chickens on the internet too and had even marked the ones he wanted! It puts such a smile on my face. One in a million :)

xxx

The muddled head

I'm alive still guys ;) Sucked into blissful English summer evenings, unrequited love (once more just for good measure) and my scarey scarey big job... Kind of happy - but actually, in truth, keeping myself too busy, stopping meant facing my fears. I needed to stop, I needed the catharsis of writing, but I just couldnt.

Then winter came... Oh dear.
And with it... each day painfull memories of my dad...
And suffocating cold greyness. Suffocating. Suffocating.

Beautiful mesmerising patterns of ice on the INSIDE of my windows!!!

I rattle around in my freezing apartment listening to the silence... Detached from the outside world. Strange thoughts come into my head - the call of a black-eyed bulbul, tall green grass, puddles in the road covered in green algae, black tadpoles. ... the familiar squeaky floor in the passageway at home - each footstep etched in patterns on my brain. Dad, purposeful and quick, mum - slower and more squeaky... my most squeakiness instilling rabid excitement from the dogs meaning "walking shoes", the houseboy - almost silent, Chutney tipping her elegant jack russell toenails before pausing a fraction of a second, then click-click, click-click, click-click down the steps.Chutney

But hey, I'm blogging again!!....

This, my friends... is what happens when you have a horrid job hanging over you. ;) Every excuse under the sun to avoid the task, EVEN forcing me back into blogging life after aeons of silence... !

The task - I'm supposed to have written up my handover "report" on my last trip home 3 months ago. Who pays what, when. How much to pay. Is Zesco (the electricity board) paid by cheque or cash, when is the fitness due on the cars, how much sugar do the servants get and when, who to contact if the pool pump blows up again... how much money is in the bank and what the heck do we do now the Kwacha is almost all run out.

Bugger. I didnt do it right away. And now its a mammoth monster glaring at me - consuming my time off week after week. And now it really IS due and STILL I cant get myself to even look at it. God I wish dad was here to sort all this out. I wish we didnt have to sell the house. I wish that life wasnt gone. I wish even... that I didnt have those memories - they are too painfull. Bits of my soul flow out in streams over my cheeks.

What catharsis can heal all of this. Perhaps not in this life... that waits for another life.

Time for a rip-roaring Africa party. England is so politely accommodating, but Africa keeps firm hold of our souls. Sounds rather like my love-life!