I arrived at our next house-sit yesterday, in Tunbridge Wells, in the South East of England after an intense drive on the M25. If you’ve never experienced the M25, it’s an ancient, busy, stop-start motorway with batshit crazy drivers. It’s like people are living such intense, stressful, power hungry lives down south (near London) that they get trigger happy with their accelerators. They’re all insane. And that made me a bit insane too and I’ve got to watch out for that. I don’t like the pressure that other drivers put me under. I’m working on getting better at this.

Roads and traffic have been the theme of the last two days. Today I went against sensible advice, ignored Waze directions and ended up in yet another South East traffic jam. I was so grateful to get out of it that I didn’t realise we’d added another hour onto our journey, heading into the depths of the unknown Kentish countryside to be faced with endless winding single track roads, wondering whether there’d be a car blocking the way behind every new bend, just wishing for normal wider roads again. How I longed for those wide open roads. I became a warrior driving us home. On some kind of mission. Just keeping on going. No matter how long it took. No matter how many bends I had to take. I’d get us there. Minutes passed by so slowly. Would we ever reach a semblance of civilisation again? And then something beautiful happened.

I saw vibrancy. I saw growth. I saw magic. Ferns unfurled along verges, bright green trees swayed in the wind’s warm embrace, rain lashed down onto lush spring growth and everything sang the song of Mother Nature. Oranges, pinks, purples burst forth all around. Lushness. Breathtaking lushness completely consumed me and I knew that everything was going to be ok.