Wish me luck! I’m off tomorrow to the Frankfurt Bookfair!
Without Maja.
I’ll be sleeping apart from her, for the very first time in her short life – which in some respects has been very short so far, yes, but in others, has been very, very long. Twenty-two months of broken milky nights she and I have spent together, without exception. We’ve been that close since she first came into existence. We’ve camped and been on road trips and gone on holidays together, we’ve crossed continents together. We’ve comforted each other on nights and sometimes weeks when Apa wasn’t there. Every. Single. Night. And now, for the first time in this so-far epic journey, we’ll be apart: 828 kilometres apart.
It’s a thrilling, scary, exhilarating thing. Quite a big thing and quite a small thing all at once. I await it eagerly; I fear it.
I’m trying to focus on the wonderful things:
The experiences I’m about to have – especially the New Zealand-y ones (New Zealand is the guest of honour at the fair).
The career opportunities that potentially await me (I am the New Zealand publishing industry’s best-kept secret, don’t you know? I edit like a boss. For the record. I wish more people knew that).
The absolutely perfect, archetypal satchel I recently purchased to accompany me on my travels.
The wine (or warm cider?) times I’m about to have with Aunty Tracey, who’s coming too.
What I achieved in cobbling together a wardrobe for the four days I’ll be away, out of my big pile of painstakingly accumulated thrift-shop treasures. I like to think it labels me ‘book-loving intellectual who knows how to have fun’. Hell, the satchel alone says that, no? I should be sweet.
Talk soon!
Daisy
Go Dais…make Maja proud! LOVE the bag!