On She Goes

A post about a friend

It’s the end of 2020, a few months into Shitshow shenanigans and I’m meeting a friend at an out of town cafe.

It’s a ghastly day, but we’re braving the rain.

British life has descended into full blown Nutsville at this point. A simple trip to a coffee shop has become an arrows-on-the-floor, temperature-taking, signing-in-book farce of ever changing nonsense.

Just being here in the cafe maskless is guaranteed to invite a multitude of disapproving glares and sometimes worse, but neither of us have ever been people pleasers and we ain’t about to start now.

This isn’t any old friend.

This, is the lady that lights me up like a front porch Christmas tree whenever I see her posts on the internet.

We all have that one mate we live vicariously through, right?

That one friend, who’s living the life we wish we had, crushing it in all kind of shades of “hell yeah!”

Well, she’s mine.

She’s a home-educating single mum, own online business, works wherever she chooses in the whole damn world.  A true digital nomad.

And she’s back in the UK for a few weeks, spending an hour with little ‘ole me.

We chat like spies. Unpopular and controversial opinions on ‘Covid’ policy shifting between us as awkward chess moves as we discuss the implications of lockdowns and how she plans to head out to Portugal next. She’s been renovating a camper van and is ready to roll.

In the brief five or so years I’ve known her, she has already lived in Thailand, Mexico and Guatemala.

“If all this is happening, I figure I may as well be somewhere sunny”

She tells me.

As I take in the drizzle drenched setts of a Yorkshire November from the window, I’m inclined to agree.

Who can blame her?

I do wonder however, how she will successfully ‘escape’ from prison island UK with its draconian rules about exiting the country, but at the same time, I know if anyone can, she can.

I am right.

On she goes!

During a lockdown she manages to flee to the continent, home educate her two kids and continue to run her online business.

But things don’t work out.

She’s just not *feeling it* in Portugal and as if to seal the deal, her beloved camper van is written off in a bad crash.

On she goes!

A loophole to avoid paying extortionate fees in quarantine hotels leads her by happy accident to Egypt. She falls head over heels in love and decides to settle. She founds a Home Ed hub attracting world schooling families from all over the globe.

She has successfully manifested the community she always wanted!

She does all this, whilst most folk I know here in Britain, are either twiddling their thumbs on furlough, sending futile emails to their MP or mooching about on Twitter (guilty as charged).

She is my ‘Uncle Travelling Matt’.

I read her enchanting social media postcards from afar and am compelled to infect the world with her virus of joy. With her permission, I post her updates to cheer people up, boost morale at a time when so many of us need it.

“Here’s an update from my friend in Egypt”

I tweet as I screenshot her Nile cruises, crocodile encounters, scuba diving and pyramid trips.

The world it seems has stood still.

But SHE hasn’t.

On she goes!

A powerhouse of a woman.

I won’t lie, we’re not that close but whenever I need a kick up the arse to believe in my dreams, there she is on social media, glowing like an absolute queen.

Her kids aren’t seeing life through dusty school books and screens. They are truly immersed in culture and adventure. They beat in sync to the heart of the world.

On she goes!

A walking, breathing advert for living life passionately on your own terms, for not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

And yesterday, I see her beautiful face again.

But this time, it’s on a post telling me she has stage 4 cancer.

Someone is raising money on her behalf to ‘extend her life’.

She’s 43.

My eyes riddle with tears as I see those luminous dreams dragged by the hair as furious dolls back to their toy box.

My hero, vulnerable - as all the best heroes are - wears both uncertainty and faith as unlikely combo. But they are just an outfit because what everyone sees above all else - what they have always seen - is a body of pure love.

It shines from her eyes.

It radiates from her smile.

It sings from her soul.

It’s a ghastly day, but she’s braving the rain.

On. She. Goes.