Coming back to Denmark is doing what I thought � nay � expected it would do. Memories are flooding over me. Giant waves threatening to drag me into the past. I don�t know why it scares me so � but anything that comes before today makes me wince. Maybe � it just occurred to me as I typed � because I was never true to me. I was never� me? Hm. Of course I was me - but I was a side of me that I do not miss or wish to nurse neither in thought nor reality. In fact, it was not so much a side of me as it was a projection of someone I needed to be in order to protect someone else � someone I had not yet met. Does that make sense?

So, I shiver and cover when I see people whom I recognise from the ever present back then that looms over me. �What�s her name,� Adam asks me when I point out people I �know.� I don�t remember, is the usual answer � usual and truthful. There are people, however, whose names I very much remember and whom I fear meeting more than anything. Fortunately, these people, I know, have long left the environ � clever them. And I don�t think any of their city-smart skinny girlfriends/partners/wives are hankering to go back.

I hate it when people talk of my coming to Denmark as a going back. The opposite of progressing - as though I retreated. I failed and had to back-track. I hate it because it�s too close to the feeling in my gut. There are no positive memories for me here.

� but neither were there any positive memories for me to hang my life on and develop from when I landed in England all them moons ago � or in Canada. So, I don�t want to feel like I�ve gone back � I want to think of this as a New Place � somewhere, where I get to start afresh. Harder when the barrow there or the wind turbine hither reminds me of� well, heartache and broken dreams.

My daughter took her very first unaided steps the day before yesterday. Now there's a memory to make up for a few from before the day before yesterday.