Tales from Colindale

Just a good excuse to get my adjoining district a mention online, which probably happens about once a year otherwise, as I was there this afternoon. Our postcode is NW9, which covers three areas, Kingsbury, West Hendon (in a different borough) and Colindale which is of an uncertain boundary on the western side, but clearly anywhere east of the A5 Edgware Road. The official postal name of NW9 is The Hyde, the fourth area bang in the middle named after the stretch of A5 between West Hendon and Colindale. Anyway, following the geography lesson I was in the Oriental supermarket and though not planning to get anything besides milk and toilet paper, found they'd extended their ready meals and desserts and came out with noodles, fish, glutinous rice cakes, basil seed and honey drink as well as a 12 pack of loo roll which should last me till easter, god willing...

Well, that was the everyday NW9 bit of activity, now some updates of the previous week. Firstly an amazing internet discovery, and a very sad one at that. I mentioned an old girlfriend I'd been looking for for years called Amarylla, and being an unusual name someone else did a search just on her first name and found my blog! I've got plenty of unreported stuff on my main site, but didn't realise similar obscurity was here as well. So he knew her online, and told me everything she'd done since I lost touch in the 80s. The sad part was she just died a month ago of a long illness. I had no way of knowing anyone would catch up with me just after it was possible to get back in touch, and we'd both told him about our trip to see the Rocky horror show in about 1977! I couldn't have seen her as she'd moved to Hong Kong once married, but the coincidences since we parted are also amazing. We both studied law, which we knew, but both went on to become counsellors, she described herself as a spiritual counsellor, and she was also a poet, something I don't do so much of. He showed me her photo which is just as she looked 20 years ago.



As an old friend I think she'd be pleased to share her image here under the circumstances. I think most people can see she looked truly different to most, and completely hypnotic. She had a near death experience and returned with the certain knowledge everything is love, and anything else is only an illusion. Without knowing it that was the most important message I needed to hear, and will try and remember it more and more in future as there's a lot of illusion in my life.

On the South African front, a simple song has created another totally unexpected connection in my life. After hearing the song 'Ag pleez deddy' on the radio in about 1970 I little expected the singer to walk into the family shop some years later so I could tell him how much I liked it, and then find he was a friend of my grandpa who owned the shop. When I remembered it recently and learnt the song and played it on the radio I decided to email and tell him, and now he's set to appear shortly on the phone from South Africa! How small events can become like a large tree!

As I was busy indoors I had ten minutes of light to take a few local pictures on the digicam, and hope to get the adaptor tomorrow so I can upload them all. It's nothing like a normal camera as I don't have to ration the snaps, and can see what I've done immediately. I'm free tomorrow so will get at least some of my creative jobs done depending on how I feel.
Now if Amarylla's really on another plane and arranged all this for me, I could almost believe it. She clearly knew something I didn't, and though I couldn't tell her I'd been looking for her for so long, have found out everything I wanted to know. Another element of a higher system at work?