Postcards from the Puckmobile – eight...

Breakfast over, a cup of coffee and some toast for me, coffee and a waffle for Luna, we set back off along the lane away from the sea. We hadn’t found a boat so there was little choice of direction. In many ways Sandsend had been a dead end; surrounded by dunes with only a small parking area and a turning point, the only way beyond it was the sea or in the case of the girl – the wind.

Nothing felt right. I’d enjoyed the beach and the memories that it remembered for me, but it had left me sad. Where was this going... anywhere? Where was I going?

Luna lay beside me on the passenger seat pretending to be asleep. I knew that she was pretending because every now and again she’d half open her blue eye, and then her green eye, to check on me. I think she sees things differently dependent on which eye she looks through - I wonder what she really sees? 

It was a grey day, one of those days where everything in the world seemed at low ebb. Of course that couldn’t be true, there were birthdays and weddings and parties and all sorts of other joys taking place around the world that would have lifted my spirits if only I’d been there. But I wasn't. Today was yet another 'not-joining-in' day for me and I was here; and I didn’t even know where here was.

“Perhaps you should stop thinking about where you are travelling to and simply enjoy the travelling.” She’d said. Perhaps I should, but I really needed to have a think about did I really want to be travelling at all? It seemed like I’d got myself into one of my pickles.

My pickles aren’t good. They involve too many questions and too few answers, are always too heavy on the vinegar and too light on the sugar – and I always finish the jar, beating myself up in the process and wearing my veneer just a little bit thinner each time.

Yes, I needed to stop and think.

It was while I was considering what sort of pickle this one was – dill, cabbage, piccalilli, onion - that I passed the sign. It stood by a half concealed entrance to a track almost completely obscured by overhanging branches. ‘CUL D SAC’ – ‘10 M.P.H’ it declared on two separate signs. A third sign placed above the others on a stout wooden post seemed to say nothing. Perhaps there was nothing else to say.

Wasn’t a cul-de-sac the same thing as a dead end? Or was a cul-de-sac somewhere when a dead end was nowhere? Was there really any difference between the two? Either way, I needed somewhere to think and a cul-de-sac, seemed to me at that moment, to be just the place to do it.

Perhaps I should have checked with Luna first, but she was still pretending to be asleep, so I reversed a little and drove the Puckster through the screen of trees and onto the track that led to goodness knows where.

I couldn't help thinking, as I drove along yet another narrow and dingy track, that I might be about to get into a hot chilli and lime pickle and get myself trapped in a Mason Jar.