I’m back

There are many things I don’t understand-like okra and weddings and nightdresses-but I’m home and I understand that.
Fortunately I didn’t marry Mo. He was very solicitous for the first three weeks. Even shut up his apothecary shop in the Medina and spent his time introducing me to the nooks and crannies of his palace and more besides. I’m such a tart for attention. There in that magnificent space beyond the medieval wooden door half way up a dirt alley, I was introduced to joy all over again.
For three whole weeks…and then the shutters were taken off the shop and I was alone for hours on end.
I took to creating a roof garden that required more attention than a toddler as I played hide and seek with the savage sun. And in my spare time I wrote three books.
Then I realised that Fez, that gorgeous link with a fast fading past, could have been anywhere in the world, and the place where I am happiest is the world of the imagination, which I can access on the same continent as my children and grandchildren (yes we’ve now got twins). So I made my excuses and left.
Three years wiser I arrived back in rain soaked England and found May in full flower and the countryside showing off more greens than the Inuit have words for snow. I can’t tell you how good that feels. Will I never learn that the answers I am searching for lie in my own back garden?