Serendipity..?

Just in case you have just fallen upon my blog, I am part of the LuckySnappingin2013 challenge which is happening over here and this week Anne has asked up to keep an eye or ear open for ...Serendipitous moments!  (and by the way, the challenge is great so far, expanding on our chat and exploring our lives, or homes and our ..heads!)

So.. to Serendipity..
I think the first time I really heard this word was in Sri Lanka in 1982 when I spent almost 4 weeks there travelling about. I went with a boyfriend (later to be my first husband, Ross & Lisa's Dad); I had just finished Uni and had worked the season in a hotel to save up.  Funny really, it must have been a bit like when kids go travelling now, but it wasn't quite backpacking. We travelled cheap on minibuses and third class trains but wanted to stay in nicer accomodation than you would expect students to stay in....he was working so he didn't really get the student thing (he never did really, even when I was studying... I think it is how offshore workers regarded tax dodging 'students' (in the voice of the Hardware cast..if you ever saw that series!) ) and really it was just an extended holiday.

Well the word was used to descibe the whole island, like a jewel dropped into the ocean just off India, the gorgeous sun and the blue blue seas and that lush vegetation... you can imagine it was an amazing unexpected discovery for many as the found the island for the first time...

..this is what I found on Wikipaedia ...  
The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon),  Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.^[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.

  Many years later in 2004 I had a similar but stronger feeling when we visited Kuramathi for the first time.  Life with five children, grandparents to think about and a business to run had been quite hectic and at last we had taken a holiday away, just us and the kids. Now two of them were teens and not home too much, not very chatty and plenty of fetching and carrying..... one of them even came home about an hour before we left for the airport!

So there we were, heading for a remote island, no teen taxi calls, no cooking, no driving, no work demands to juggle with the school run or teatime... we walked off the boat onto a baking hot wooden jetty and all we had imagined disappeared with the reality of it being there, right in front of us, stepping into the postcard paradise for real!!!

The overwhelming heat, the intense bright sunshine and oh that crystal water and fish you had only seen in miniature in a fishtank shop.....all naturally ocurring and ours for two whole weeks.

I was speechless, almost tearful at the relief of the change in routine, the escape from the stresses we had built up over about five years of hard slog... and an hour later as I stood in the shade of the palm trees and subconsciously counted each of my children, ticking off the virtual boxes in my mind as I must have done daily for many years (and for sure I still do.. just logging in my head where every one of them is.. this week it is when I have missed our Zac, noting as I come downstairs each morning that he is not in his room, that the door is open again all night..)
.. that moment seeing all my children together swimming, in one place, no demands, nothing to make us leave the moment.. that was and is still is a serendipity moment for me.

But, back to the reality of mizzley Cornish January (to be fair there have been pockets of blue sky, but not pockets you could store many handfuls of pebbles in mind you)...how has today given me some (not quite so momentous ) but still nicely warming moments?... I shall list them..

• ..the Tremeloes singing 'Silence is Golden' as I drove to collect Kate.
• ..buying a meal for two for ten pounds at M&S, adding veg and ice cream and stretching it to feed three, almost four and feeling like we were having a real treat!
• .. spending the evening with the kids, JB making jewelry (will her creativity just sit still for one!), Kate exercising and showing me snippets of a nice routine combining the pole exercise with old gym and acrobatics, Ross just hanging out.. and doing the dishes (ohh the pleasure that gave me!)
• ..watching a part of David Attenborough's Africa where an elephant mother refused to leave her dying calf, being glad we were human and that someone invented penicillin
• ..and last night watching the opening episodes of Gavin & Stacey with two kids who like it too and no husband who is only watching it because he knows I just love it! (sweet guy x)
• ...oh and having a lovely comment about my ramblings from my pal Yvonne... thank you hun x

Here are the Tremeloes for those who may love that memory too.. it was probably one of the first songs I loved, my brother being eleven years older was well into pop and I was only six.. 

We used to have to put his radio on the pelmet to get a decent reception .. and if his favourites came on I would bang on the wall under his bedroom to let him know.. sad, but true.. wonder if he remembers.. always the kid sister huh! xx