Another month with 30 days, another set of prompts from @WritingDani (explained here). This time I used the prompts to diarise, and you can follow as the house is packed up and everything moved into storage. Then we set off for Europe. I enjoyed recording my days so much that I kept going when April finished, until we got home again.

This time I got the highest number of ‘likes’ and comments for April 22. That was a lovely evening, so I’m glad that others picked up on that.

1

Flow

It should be easy, this packing up a house, filling boxes. But my flow is obstructed – by messages of rainbows and lovehearts, or a set of origami boxes, with smiles.

2

Spring

If new ideas spring up in the intersections between different ways of thinking, but so much thinking is now done for us – even casually – is this the end of knowledge?

3

Float

Years ago, the swell off Tamarama dug a deep drop, close to shore. In these nights of sleepless tossing, I hold the memory of floating there, swung by the waves.

4/5

Twirl / Flutter

Imagine that. Twirling. Fluttering. Like leaves, dried and yellowed, drifting slowly on a sweet breeze. Wafting. Dancing.

No, I can’t imagine that. Leaden. Robotic. Sort. Pack. Tape. Sort. Pack. Tape.

6

Swivel

A Russian, a Ukrainian and a German walk through my door. My head swivels as they remove the furniture and carefully packed boxes. They are the ace team of removalists.

7

Flip

It flips so quickly. It was my home. Now it is empty rooms and drooping curtains, floorboards visible. No furniture. Walking out is like walking out of a box, into …

8

Jangle

… facing people with pasted-on smiles, throwing words like ‘pricing guide’ and ‘off-market opportunity’ at me – words that totter then plummet, to jangle as they fall, a mournful farewell to language.

9

Dive

Time to dive into this world, of labyrinthine corridors and swamps of tables, jungles of shops and waiting area deserts. Indecipherable announcements squawk overhead. Our fellow passengers murmur. Plane delayed.

10

Switch

In 26 hours we changed countries, currencies, clocks and climate, Sydney’s perfect autumn of warm sun, cool air, switching to Warsaw’s welcome of grey sleet, then puffs of flying snow. 

11

Wander

No wandering today. A quick walk, made brisker by the rain, to Polin, Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Many hours later we emerged, not just quiet, but speechless.

12

Plunder

Museums are teaching me Poland’s history; centuries of conquest and plunder. Today, Praga, on the north side of the Vistula – vulnerable on Warsaw’s outskirts, destroyed by Napoleon for his fortifications. 

13

Fizz

She strides down the aisle, bangs the piano open, attacks it with expert hands. Keys plonk. She frowns. Chopin winces. At interval there is ‘sparkling wine’ but nothing fizzes here. 

14

Pop

Never met either of my grandfathers. Both gone before I was born. Never would have called them Pop anyway. Too informal for one of them. Wrong language for the other. 

15

Wiggle

Not possible to wiggle out of it now. The taxi has arrived at the front gate. We’re pushing the door open. Walking into the foyer. Being taken to the hall. 

16

Collect

I’m collecting thoughts, impressions, images as we travel. Words. Nothing as coherent as a feeling yet, although – I did gasp in the courtyard that my grandmother would have walked in.

17

Stretch

The Gdansk museum of the Second World War. Displays of propaganda posters, swastika Christmas baubles, uniforms and guns lead to a sign saying, Horror. I am stretched to my limits. 

18

Slide

For a moment the sights, sounds, tastes, the many exhaustions of body and mind of these last few days slide into place. A lightness replaces the weights of the past. 

19

Swoop

A bright green field, edged with blossom. A dot in the sky becomes a raptor gliding, hovering, wings blurring. The train carries me on before I can see the swoop. 

20

Feast

We decided to eat on Potsdamer Platz before the concert. I hadn’t expected a feast, but our choices were bratwurst from a stall or a bowl of mass-produced Thai salad. 

21

Wind

Small sections of the Wall, die Mauer, that used to wind its way between East and West Berlin, have been left in place. Berliners don’t need these remnants to remember.

22

Weave

She speaks little English. I speak little German. But we weave words to learn stories and laugh a lot. After dinner we hug, walk away, turn and wave. Smile again. 

23

Pounce

On the edge of a shaded street a grey cat stares into a garden, motionless, ready to pounce. A toddler toddles, points and gurgles. ‘Cat language’, her father says proudly. 

[Better as:

Grey cat with a punched-face stares at a silent bush, readying its pounce in a shaded street. Toddler with an unsteady gait gurgles and points. Proud father says, ‘Cat language!’]

24

Ripple

We moved from the garden flat into the Kurfurstendamm hotel. More a tsunami than a ripple through our holiday. No bobbing greenery outside. Just heavy-anchored cranes and a blank wall.

25

Challenge

Yesterday a man exercised under an oak tree, clothes neatly folded at its base, his nakedness a challenge to passers-by to look or look away. Today, only cyclists flash by. 

26

Rummage

I wake, rummage through my head. Today – Saturday. We are in – Berlin. Language – German. I must order my coffee ‘mit Hafermilch’. Not in Poland now. No ‘bez laktozy’ milk available.

27

Skip

The Ku’damm is empty in bright spring Sunday sparkle, the street washed clean, innocent as a skipping child. Last night’s hordes, revving and rumbling through the siren-heavy dark, are gone. 

28

Wave

So we say auf wiedersehen Berlin. Wave goodbye! Off to the north via high speed autobahns to smoked eel and novelty marzipan, Baltic Sea beach huts and fresh-leafed dappled-light woods. 

29

String

The dogs pull at their leads as we approach the dog park, a fenced-off section of the forest. They’re released and, like balloons freed of strings, they catch the wind. 

30

Gather

I feel the need to gather myself. Rescue my legs from endless airport corridors; remind my eyes that clouds and patchwork fields and the birds-eye view are for the birds. 

Extra one – May 1

Launch

Before she launches into her solo, exposed, alone, does the soprano have a moment of doubt? I prefer writing, where you have a second chance at hitting the right word. 

#travelling2025 #30 words

May 2

It stays light until all hours here. We walk home from the concert, all of the bridges completed in water mirrors, small ovals of light forming within the stone chains. 

May 3

The bus to Cobh’s last stop is at the cemetery. The timetable had said it was at O’Neills. I had expected a lolly shop. Still, this is an actual terminus. 

May 4

Boys on the bridge jostle and call, push and bellow, elbowing, staggering, falling into the passers-by. Bottles of rum and coke litter the bench. We eat our lunch.

May 5

Goodbye to Cork with its looping river and many bridges, its big white seagulls wheeling and squealing. Its grey stone churches where choirs sang. Its tiny pubs where fiddles sawed.

May 6

At the museum the map’s green lines are the Irish spreading; missionaries with their beliefs, soldiers with their might. Speedy videos claim everyone as Irish: US presidents to Che Guevara.

May 7

While Seamus Heaney dedicated himself to poetry, and the ethics of the Troubles, I grappled with nappies, and my own troubled heart. I’m not bitter. Not a bit of it.

May 8

Coming down from the wide brown mountain we heard a cuckoo. Cuck-oo. We heard the high-pitched maaaa of a lamb and the combined growl of sheep running down a field.

May 9

The path hugged the edge as it neared the summit and I studied my feet at each step. But I knew it was there, that deep glistening lough, far below.

May 10

‘Just keep the sea on your left,’ she said as she waved us off. Fourteen kilometres of lapping sea-on-our-left later, we arrived at the pick-up point, dazed by glinting waves. 

May 11

Water trickles in hidden channels, feeding the rushing river, tumbling through grey boulders down to the calming valley. Yellow gorse clumps along its edges. Brown hills rise up, encompassing it.

May 12

Over five days we walked 74 kms, total elevation gain of 1925 metres. I’m already missing the rasp of my own breath, lungs filling with forest air, legs pushing forward.

May 13

London. She darts out of nowhere and stops. Face contorted, hands reaching. ‘Help me!’ she whines, eyes widening, watering. I want to run, like the deer on the forest path.

May 14

London. Where a young man walks onto Penge West station holding a nice bunch of cellophaned flowers. He looks at them, surprised, as if they’ve just been presented to him.

May 15

London. The weather has turned, blue skies replaced by grey, light winds now bitter, and the summer clothes in the window displays have resumed their traditional roles. Forlorn. Aspirational. Laughable.

May 16

London, like Berlin, has canals. Wild places that look forgotten, with littered paths of birdsong and nettles running quietly below bus-jammed roads. A family of white-billed ducks dips for waterweed.

May 17

We change trains at Shadwell, a different London. No Ottolenghi here. Faded signs in dusty shop windows. Narrow doorways, patched doors. A man stares at our intrusion, and looks away.

May 18

Suddenly they fill the station, arms raised, marching to drums, football shirts like solid armour. Old men setting the pace, young men on bouncing feet, boys running, in the pack. 

May 19

We join the canal at The Angel, head east. Gardens grow on the boats. Cats and bikes and solar panels. Cyclists and joggers and walkers jostle for the narrow path.

May 20

For the second time a worried man has pulled me back from the closing doors of a Tube train. Beware their fierce unforgiving jaws. They are trained to savage latecomers.

May 21

And now it’s time to return, into the real world where we don’t spend hours strolling, imagining lives in these quiet streets, these places that don’t match my noisy memories.

May 22

Flying over central Australia, I look down on red waves caught in motion, held there by time. Far away, white patches of salt lakes. Black riverbeds curve, snaking towards them.