I learned a very important thing this year. I even tested it out (well, not quite).

The journey of one thousand miles, starts with a single step (Lao Tzu).

It's amazing the course that that one step can put you on, and it's a lot of fun finding out where you'll end up.

So, in light of that, some memories of the year that was 2008:

April: Moving overseas was always a daunting prospect but the hardest part turned out to be packing up and moving out of our Sydney house. We had both loved living in Petersham and it was very sad to be leaving, even with such exciting things ahead. It wasn't the smoothest of moves. After packing up my car the morning of the move, I got a phone call from some people interested in buying it. I frantically moved everything out of it again and sold it at what was truly the eleventh hour. Meanwhile, Eddy and our friend, Brendan, tossed the stuff I had unpacked from the Barina on top of everything else they had packed in Dad's Ute.

It was that afternoon, in a moment of terror on the M4 that we discovered the difference between an 'old' man's move and a 'young' man's move. The difference saw us pulled over on a nameless street somewhere in the western suburbs having had to pull off the M4 when our tarpaulin showed a pronounced desire to fly away and some of the furniture developed a worrying amount of wriggle room. It was raining but we pulled off all our stuff and packed it again, this time in a method more akin to playing tetras then the “toss it in, she'll be right” approach. That done, we headed back on the road, me glimpsing back every minute to make sure we were still okay. Unfortunately, the setback had, well, set us back and a problem we had hoped to avoid was at hand. Dad had explained that something was wrong with the low-beam light switch and that unless you held the lever in place, you only had a choice between high beam or nothing. We had expected to be driving home in the light, but it was getting dark before we even reached the mountains. Eddy's hand was starting to spasm from holding the lever. At last we pulled over at a petrol station, and with a wad of chewing gum, he managed to jam the lever in place. Ingenious. The only drawback was that this meant we couldn't use the blinkers.

We made it home at last, both of us a bit traumatised. Mum and Dad were there smiling, welcoming us home, dinner ready to go, a bottle of wine open. We had all sat down when Eddy went a bit pale and said “Mr Scott, do you have a spare key for the car?” Dad didn't, but he had a coat-hanger, and in the hands of a Dad, that's just as useful.


August: Eddy and I were out walking in the meadows behind our house in Bath. We had been following a path that went along a stream through a valley. It was very pretty, and in the great English tradition, very muddy. I was wearing my walking shoes whereas Eddy was wearing his old faithfuls, those shoes of his heart, his Dunlop volleys. We had both been slipping around a lot but I couldn't help laughing when with one step, he sank in, half a shoe. He glared at me as he splooched his foot out and we continued walking in silence. We got to a stile, and with a misplaced step, I did the same thing. Eddy looked at me, a smug, righteous expression on his face and said, “That, Susie, that is called-” Just as the word “karma” escaped his lips, he took another step and sank in up to his ankles. Needless to say, I found it rather funny, and so did he, once we were home and dried off. His volleys unfortunately were never the same again.


October: We were not yet a third of the way through the Camino and for the first time, I was really tired. The path was covered in rocks so that, although it was flat, it was tiring. We decided to stop, somewhat reluctantly 8km short of our intended destination. We were in a tiny village called Ventosa and we stuck out amongst the locals when we went to get some boccadillos at the bar. I was feeling bad for having made Eddy stop so early but when we checked in at the albergue we found to our delight that some friends were stopping there too. There was Pierre, a Catholic priest from Western Australia, Suzie, a Sydney girl, Gizza, an actress from L.A and Anrie, a retiree from Holland who had started the Camino in his birthplace several months before. For the first time, we cooked and ate dinner together, and drank several bottles of the albergue's house wine. At 9pm, the owners of the albergue summoned us all outside. They brought out a cauldron filled with coffee, lemons, oranges and schnapps. They lit it on fire and it shot up beautiful hot, blue flames that lasted for a long time. At their instruction, we stood around in a circle, holding hands, and together we cast away bad spirits and beckoned good ones in what they told us was an ancient pagan ritual. It was one of the most memorable moments of the Camino and from that day on, we didn't worry if we felt like stopping early. We were just glad we had.


December: Eddy and I hopped on a train from Glasgow's Queen Street Station to Banavie, the stop after Fort William. It was quite a surreal journey, in that everything outside had turned a blinding white colour. There was snow, lots and lots of it and the sky was the same colour giving the impression that the whole world had decided to go minimalist. It was dark by the time we reached our destination but we knew from our previous trip where we were going. The problem was getting there. The large public car park we had to walk across was covered in ice. We slowly started edging our way across. I had a moment of despair when I looked up and realised I had come less than half way but after a little while I seemed to get hold of the technique of gently sliding forward. It was a comforting experience, arriving at the hostel and coming in from the cold. It wasn't home yet, but it had a lot of potential, and in the meantime, we could sit in front of the fire and look out at a winter wonderland.


A big thank you to those of you who have read my blog this year. I always love getting comments and you no longer have to sign up to leave them, just click on the link below each entry.