It continues, The Wanderlust. I cannot help it. My brain just wants to stretch out on a beach and chill, it must be the brain talking because I have never been a sunbather. I always preferred doing dangerous things with skis, canoes and windsurfers. I have a lot of new readers on my Blog (thank you, lovely people) so I suppose I ought to return to my roots and explain the origins of 'Donut Child' and the 'Donut Kids' that are still with me.
Donut Child started because, after keeping a life long journal, I injured my arm (also known as The Fecking Bastard Arm) and could not write in longhand. The first year was so hard. Somehow, I had to share my thoughts, in a sanitised way, with the rest of the world. Anyway! I got over all that. Shoved the dirty linen under the bed as far as I could and coped.
Onto Donut Child and the wonderful childhood I experienced. My father was a very small fish in a very big pond when I was born in Cyprus in 1963. My dad was 22 and my mum 19 years old, a long way away from home. He was the lowest of the low, an SAC in the RAF. My earliest memory is of heat, a warm frisky, dry heat. Watching my brother and sister play and fight and get into all sorts of trouble. They were twins and absolutely gorgeous children. I was five, they were two and a half. I remember being so protective of them and if they did anything I would 'own up' on their behalf.
I can remember my dad taking me to my first day at school at Ay Nik Primary School. I was so glad of his hand in mine. We had to go on an enormous bus (erm...actually a small falling apart 'Chicken Bus') and I loved school. Some of the Donut Children that read this started on that day with me and 13 years later, despite following each other, randomly around the world, the same kids managed to finish Secondary School at King Richards in Cyprus with me.
Digressing again. Can you imagine coming home from school at the age of five, living right on the beach, throwing off your clothes, climbing into your swimmies and plunging into the warm Mediterranean Sea. After a swim, my mother would call me and lower down my lunch in a little bucket from our second floor flat. Then dad coming back from work, pulling off his uniform and swimming out with me on his back out to the reef to snorkel and swim with the fish and the turtles.
Life as a Donut Child wasn't always so romantic, we did our time in Germany, in the snow drifts of Berlin, also in the depressing quarters of RAF Digby, where we experienced The Winter of Discontent but somehow I managed 13 whole years in Cyprus and three visits to Ascension Island. What more can a girl ask for!
The Donut Kids are with me today. We have managed two reunions so far. The first was so special. It had been 30 years since we had seen each other. No boring school reunion for us. We had not only travelled throughout our childhoods but many of us had been abroad for most of our adult lives. I am so grateful to be in touch with them as even today many of us travel and are never in the the same place for long. I suppose that is why we cling to one another, even though we are all in our forties.
My father left the RAF but got a new job as a Donut at The Central Spelling Office. Can't tell you much about that as The Central Spelling Office is supposed to be a secret. Now you understand the reason for my Wanderlust.
Thank you for reading Donut Child, I appreciate it so much.
Namaste
Muse x
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