I rise with the dawn and make Peccadillo ready to sail, delectable pottering with ropes and bolts, and the rolling pontoon casts my sleepy tread into a dancing gait, weaves me into the history of Scottish sailors. Oh what fine company.
Me and my Peccadillo and the morning. Perhaps one of the things I miss most about Africa is the predictability of dawn and dusk. Here I chase the dawn through the summer and wait for it all winter. That makes this dawn run in spring all the more precious. A blackbird finishes one particularly long song with the distinct trill of a mobile phone… and I laugh. What of it? It just is. For just this precious moment I sidestep the tragedy and soak myself in the morning.
The engine shouts into life, shattering the morning with a rude objection to waking, but quickly settles to a happy mumble that syncopates the other morning sounds. We cut loose at last, me and my sleeping crew…. me and my Peccadillo and the canal as still as glass. The sun slips red shafts through the trees to pierce the vestiges of mist and light the gorse to impossible gold. The chill and still beauty… oh this Scotland takes my breath away ever and again. I hear the birds above the boat-beat and in my wake the canal threads away like a thick strong plait of young girl’s hair. Peccadillo glides effortless across the surface of the canal and of time, unfolding one magical curve after another.
What of yesterday? What of tomorrow? What conceivable success could compare to the dawn kindling on the Kingfisher’s breast? What of heaven and hell and the striving between? What possible angst should distract me from this moment where everything is just exactly as it should be… and I am.
Here and now.
Present.
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