Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Iris once more

May has always been my favourite month as long as I can remember. It holds promises of warm summer days to come and quite often, the weather in May surpasses June.
May 1973 had an unusually warm spell for a couple of weeks and towards the end of that month, Iris was due a week’s holiday. The weather was sunny and rain-free. I managed to get a few days off and one morning, we packed a couple of bags, got in the car and just drove.
I had no clear intention where I wanted to go but just being with Iris on our own was all that mattered; we carried on driving until late afternoon, stopping off here and there along the way.
I remember that we finished up in a little village outside Leicester; a place called Mountsorrel. It was a pretty village and we stayed overnight at a local pub.
The next day, we continued south and cut across country towards Cambridge where we stayed the night before going on to Felixstowe. I remembered Felixstowe from my childhood days when I spent my school holidays down there with my mother. While I was there, I sent my mother a postcard to remind her of the place. Later, I had a bit of a problem explaining what I was doing there and with whom!!!
We went as far as Walton-on-the-Naze and I reminisced about my favourite childhood author, Arthur Ransome, who wrote a novel about a group of children who camped on an island in Pennyhole Bay not far from Walton. The novel was called Secret Water.
Iris loved every minute of our whistle-stop holiday and I loved showing her places she had never seen before. By this time, five months after our meeting, I knew I could never be parted from her even if it cost me my marriage, my family or my job.
We returned home on the Friday evening and I stayed with her back home until Sunday morning. It had been a glorious few days and it was a promise of what the rest of the summer would be like.

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