Be it ever so humble, there really is no place like home!

This week has flown by. The weather has been exceptionally fine and the company couldn't have been better!
I spent the last six months in the wilds of Kurdistan;on the very border with both Turkey and Iran. Loved the place! The scenery was quite dramatic: my apartment had a mountain view, which was really very romantic. Having watched numerous sixties and seventies films about the likes of Dr. Zhievago and Genghis Khan what I often expected to see, as I stood by the kitchen window, washing up, was a Yul Brenner/Omar Shariff look alike galloping over the hills with his considerably sized band of horsemen, on his way to sweep me off to a mystic land, where favoured ladies are cosseted both night and day!

It never happened but the welcome I received there from the word go, was amazing and most of the people I came across were lovely. I met Kurds from Sulaimaniyah-all eager to know what I thought of their homeland and I met Arabs from Bhagdad, who were of the same mind as the Kurds! The minute you show your appreciation of the place, they are so happy. They know what kind of reputation their country has in the west, but the truth is that much of the place is so beautiful. In some good ways, to live there is like stepping back in time: there are old fashioned values still- manners and courtesy, for instance. Yes, there are scary things, but I quickly came to realise that many of the scary elements in life could either be explained or were particularly intimidating to me because my generation of Brits have led a peculiarly sheltered and nannied existence!

For me, one scary thing was meeting a man with his whole head swathed in a checked scarf of the type instantly associated with the region. Yet, to spend a windy spring or summer day there or a particularly cold winter day in January/February, is to instantly understand why it is that  many middle eastern men cover their faces in such a fashion! I can't remember meeting one guy who was anything less than polite and many, -the two Doctors who treated me for instance, were both very genteel, thorough, knowledgeable and compassionate guys and my next door neighbour, who asked me to think of him as my Kurdish son and who was and is the sort of son any mother would be rightly proud to claim, -were just plain lovely! I spent my whole life subconsciously trying to be a man's equal and the experience of being looked after was wonderful. There is a good reason why this area has a romantic association with the idea that women should be cosseted, its because in my experience, in many ways they are! (Note to self: next time my other half shows an inclination to behave in a protective way towards me, I need to enjoy it and appreciate it more.)
On my way into work, everyday I had the backdrop of a different set of uplands to look at. These were less high but no less dramatic in appearance for that. They reminded me of the Dark Peak in Derbyshire. Really I pined throughout my stay there for the chance to get in those hills with my walking boots and a back pack and to wander, aimlessly. It's what I like to do at home; but although my heart whispered: 'Do it!' my head told me that to wander in the hills, which lay between Mosul and Kirkuk and my city, would be madness. There are, we are assured, still abductions frequently taking place. I could never work out whether, as a innocent western do-gooder, working under the auspices of a large Kurdish Oil Company, I represented a soft target or I had no allure whatsoever! It's probably best that I never got the chance to figure it out.

So it was that, with Iraq's dramatic scenery fresh in my memory, I took the opportunity to drive over the south Pennines to visit my little sister and to spend the day in the company of my family. What a day! It was just a quiet day with my sisters and the rest of my family, but we get together so infrequently, that the occurrence is a very precious one.

On the way over, I had to drive through Saddleworth and pass it's infamous moor. Oh the fresh air and the amazing views when one reaches the very highest points of the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire! I had quite forgotten how much I loved that place. It is different every time you go there, but I love it best in the hot sun and with a stiff breeze blowing through the grasses. Just as it was on Saturday!  I took some time to stop on the very top and to just take in the view as I breathed in the good fresh air. It was then that I remembered how much I love the place I was born in and that little Dorothy's saying: 'There's no place like home!' is in fact very true!