Sadly, in the last week of
April 2017, after Trav and I had been living and working in Bucharest Romania for a
month, we heard news from family in the UK that Trav’s dad had become gravely
ill. It had been less than three months since the death of his mum.
Trav immediately returned to
the UK to be with his dad during his last days.
Just a few days later, after
his dad had passed away peacefully, Trav returned to Bucharest and together we
packed our bags to leave Bucharest and travel back to the UK to be with family
and to prepare for the funeral.
First, we flew into Scotland
to meet with our son Iain who lives in Glasgow and our son Ben who lives in Edinburgh.
The silver lining in the
dark cloud of our bereavement was that for the second time this year, and in a short
space of just three months, we would get to spend more time with our sons, with my own
mum, and our much-missed family in the UK.
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| Blue skies over Glasgow |
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| Our son Iain and his lovely girlfriend Alice |
During our few days in
Scotland, I also took the opportunity to attend a Romantic Novelist’s
Association lunch in Edinburgh. It had been several years since I’d met up with
my friends in the RNA Scottish Chapter. When I saw on our group Facebook page
that a lunch meeting was being arranged for the morning I arrived back, I
jumped at the chance to go along. I took the train from Glasgow and it was wonderful to see blues skies over Edinburgh and all my Scottish
writer friends again face to face.
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| Edinburgh Castle in the sunshine |
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| Blue skies over Princes Street Edinburgh |
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| With Rosemary Gemmell in Edinburgh |
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| With Eileen Ramsay - chair of the Romantic Novelist's Association |
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| It was wonderful to catch up with my Scottish writer friends in Edinburgh |
Also, while we were in
Edinburgh, we got together with our son Ben and his lovely girlfriend Hayley
and all her family.
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| Trav and I with Hayley and Ben at the bowling club |
Hayley is a ladies champion
bowls player and there was a match being played that day at the local bowling club. It was a fun day and a welcome chance to spend quality time with Ben and Hayley especially when
in just a few day’s time – the day after his grandad’s funeral – they were
looking forward to their three-week holiday in Orlando Florida.
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| Hayley in action |
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| Hayley's mum Andrea and Graham |
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| Fun at the bowling club with Ben and Hayley and her family |
Trav and I travelled down to
England by train and were once again so grateful to our best friend Dina, who had
generously offered to share her home with us again while we were in the UK.
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| Hanging out with my best friend Dina |
In the days before the funeral, we managed to have some fun times with Dina in our old home town of Widnes and we also got to spend a great day out in Liverpool - exploring all the tourist sites like the Albert Dock and the Caven Club.
The day of the funeral was
an emotional one for all the Horton family. For Trav and his brothers, Rob and
Stuart, to lose both parent’s in such a short time was heart-breaking. As it
was for all eight grandchildren to lose their grandparents. Their legacy of
course will live on in them all and also in their one great-grandchild, Aaron,
who lives in South Korea and whom they sadly had never met.
A short time after the
funeral, on a solemn grey and rainy day in May, Jimmy and Dot’s ashes were
buried together in the same Runcorn cemetery where their parent’s had been laid
to rest. A small and intimate service was held with just their three son’s and wives present. Trav, being the eldest of the brothers, said a few words
over his parent’s grave while we all held hands and said our last goodbyes.
For mid-May, initially from Bucharest, I had booked flights to London in order to attend the
Romantic Novelist’s Association Summer Party. This writer’s networking event is
a great opportunity for writers to get together with publishers and agents and
other writing professionals. As I had been out of the country off and on for
almost four years, I also saw this event as a great opportunity, not only for
me to meet up with my writer friends, but to put my finger back on the pulse of
the writing industry and to see what had changed over the past few years.
I had hastily re-organised my travel arrangements and I was very excited to be accompanied to
the event and staying with my lovely writer friend Linn B Halton, who lives
outside London. Linn and I hadn’t seen each other face to face (if you don’t
count Skype) since the Festival of Romance several years before so you can
imagine how much we had to talk about!
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| Ready for the RNA Summer Party -with my lovely friend Linn B Halton |
Linn and I travelled to London together
by train, had a fabulous lunch in an Italian restaurant in Piccadilly, and then caught up
with other Romantic Novelist’s for pre-party drinks. It was so great to see
everyone again. Below are a few photos with my lovely writer chums!
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| With Linn having lunch in London |
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| Pre-party cocktails with lovely writer friends |
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| With Mandy Baggot |
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| With Talli Roland who also writes as Leah Mercer |
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| With lovely Liz Harris |
Soon, Trav and I felt ready to move on again. As we don’t have a home of our own in the UK anymore and, as we still have wanderlust to travel, we were keen to take up our nomadic adventures again and there is nothing like losing people to remind us of the fragility of life and how quickly time passes.
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| Our flight from London to KL via Singapore |
Trav and I want to travel the world together while we can, while we still have our health, and before we get too old to do so. Of course, we love and miss our family and friends, but we appreciate they have busy lives too and being close geographically to them is no guarantee we would see them often as we'd like anyway. So I'm so grateful to the times in which we live; when we can keep in touch with our loved ones whenever we like on the internet and, thanks to affordable air travel, no place and no one in the world is much more than 12 hours away from us.
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| A farewell meal with my family before leaving for SE Asia |
So we left the UK to fly
back to Asia. We took a flight back to Kuala Lumpur and, while
in a taxi to our hotel in KL, we had some wonderful news from Orlando Florida, where our
son Ben was on holiday with his girlfriend Hayley. He had proposed and Hayley had
became his fiancée.
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| The newly engaged Ben and Hayley in Orlando Florida |
We were thrilled and so excited to see their proposal on
video and to see how happy they are together. Our driver must have wondered
what was going on when he heard me squealing and tearful on the back seat of
his taxi!
After a good night’s sleep in KL, the next morning, we headed straight for the Perhentian Islands off the east coast of peninsula Malaysia. We flew with Air Asia from KLIA2 to Kuta Bharu - a 45 min flight and then took a bus and a boat over the Perhentian Besar (the larger of these islands). It’s a place that has been on our radar for a couple of years now but we have never
been in Malaysia during these island’s short season - between May and September
– after which all boats stop going there and all accommodations close down.
What is special about the
Perhentian Islands you may ask?
Well, for one they are incredibly
beautiful - the beaches are white sand beaches and said to be some of the best in the
world - and the diving and snorkelling too is said to be amazing. But there is one
other very special reason that we headed out to the Perhentians at this time and that is to do
with my current Work In Progress. I needed to go to these islands for research
purposes.
In my next book, I have a heroine who is establishing a turtle conservation
sanctuary on an island– and so for a week I was going to be staying at a turtle conservation center to learn all about sea turtles and turtle hatcheries and baby turtles while
Trav went diving.
If I was really lucky, I hoped that on Perhentian Island I would get to see baby turtles hatching and then help to release them
to the sea. If I was really really lucky
I would get to see a nesting turtle returning to the beach that she had been
born on at least thirty years before, to lay her eggs under the light on the
moon, before making her way back into the sea.
Please do join me here on
the blog next time to find out more about the beautiful Perhentian Islands and to find
out exactly how very lucky I was!
Love,
Janice xx
