Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

It does feel like we have been rushing from pillar to post so far on this trip. Somewhere in all of last week’s mayhem I picked up a cold, so most of my time on the teaching seat at Hebden was punctuated by coughing and snuffling. I didn’t feel sick or run down, at least. The main hindrance to my preparing for the talk on Friday was trying to figure out why I had never received a confirmation email about the flight back to England from Belfast (our next leg); it was only after trying to reach EasyJet by email and chat that I looked up the phone number for their customer service line, and by the time I had got through to someone, I had rediscovered the screenshot of the booking reference which I didn’t think I had (I almost always do this for things I pay for if I don’t get confirmation right away), and we were able to ascertain that I hadn’t got the confirmation because I had mistyped my email address. We could add this to our file of misadventures, along with mistyping my name on the hotel booking in London we had to make, and having to rebook the flight to Belfast several weeks ago as our original flight was cancelled and they put us on an early morning flight we couldn’t possibly have got to.

In any case, with that sorted, I relaxed, and made skimpy notes for the talk, from which I was able to spin out some coherent thoughts, which provoked a good discussion. We had strong attendance for the talk, and the sitting the next day, and I had met almost everyone before.

I didn’t sleep at all well on Friday, with two short periods of sleep and a few hours of wakefulness in between, so the alarm was a little unwelcome. During the sitting, between my cold and the jetlag, my brain was pretty frazzled, which counterintuitively made the sitting much easier. I had a few practice discussions in the afternoon, and we enjoyed a group dinner afterwards; this time in a pub along the canal. I had thought it might be nice to be up the hill as previously, so as to get a better view of the planetary alignment. In the end, after the changeable weather and the snow flurries, it was very clear, and we had no problem picking out Mars, Jupiter and Venus, with Saturn rather eclipsed by Venus.

Getting to Belfast was pretty smooth, until we rather wobbled into our landing with strong wind and rain. I hadn’t expected anything different in terms of the weather we were going to encounter in the UK, but it did reduce our activities a little – we spent some time in town on Monday, but hoped-for excursions didn’t seem worth the effort in such poor conditions.

I set another early alarm on Tuesday to join Djinn for the sitting at Black Mountain, though again I had a split and limited sleep (I know I would have felt guilty if I had begged off). This was my first time in the new venue, since my previous visit had been three weeks before the fire at the old building. Everyone came for a coffee afterwards.

After lunch Ruth and I got a bus into town, walked down some familiar streets to the Ulster Museum, which had been recommended, and was well worth the hours of browsing. In the evening we had dinner with friends, the sunny day supplanted by more showers.

Wednesday saw us on our sixth plane in ten days or so, the short hop to Gatwick, and a train down to a rainy south coast. My friend had had two knee replacements in October, so I hadn’t originally included her on our itinerary, but she has been recovering with impressive speed, and apart from seeing her go down stairs cautiously, I would never have known.

Today there were just a few trains (announced delays on both days thankfully did not affect our trips), and now we are at my sister’s in advance of the whole raison d’être of our trip, my mother’s ninetieth birthday this weekend, so we have a few days in the same place. All being well, all her descendants will be present.