My morning ritual has become an hour’s work

People cross your path and stay. And sometimes not. The stayers become friends; firm. The rest? Take your lesson, the universe tells me, and move on. But all are vital on your path, I think.

I had a best friend for nine years working at a national newspaper who helped me week after week bring it out with our left hand. And then he left for Canada – despite the promise that the night my hubby dies (we knew it was inevitable) he’ll whisk me away for a night of passion before I faced the world.

We both knew it would be no more than me curling into a ball and him just holding me – point is: he wasn’t there. I didn’t hear from him while in my deepest despair until nine years later.

And I fell asleep during his visit in front of my home fire… How I hate the next sentence but … I’m of an age … where I just don’t forge new friendships.

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Older wiser me have got my five on one hand who will take my drunken call at 2am. But then the universe threw me The Curve Ball: a man with stature; a man who lives art and is venerated. I’m helping him with his, what I see, biggest passion: words. It teems in his art works; dictionaries he writes; words he pens. Weirdly, I get it.

He’s writing yet another dictionary – and he can live those in between the greatest art – and needs an expert on the boeretaal. Our trial run is now, four weeks later, a firm 8am every morning “make your coffee but we need to work”.

Like me, he wants our kombuistaal’s idioms explained to his kids. Like me he married Ingels; like me our culture disappears between the Oregon pine floor boards of our home. I get it. I’ve been revelling in hidden gems; had healthy debates from a comma to a spelling.

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My morning ritual has become an hour’s work, followed by an amazing breakfast with an amazing mind. And mind-opening words just flowing over good food. I see the friends, lovers, popping in all the time – that’s just what happens if you’re a Druid from another planet. But I count my blessings. True to myself I weirdly get him. I want to write my friend’s book.