The six weeks before Christmas were tough, the emotion stirred up by writing the last Taooftash update collided with an up current of enthusiasm for the next place, and then met a undercurrent of latent despair amplified by the actions of saying goodbye to form a hum dinger of a personal rip curl. You'll note how seamlessly the metaphors of surfing are being used here, I will have no trouble fitting in with the natives "what oh! a gnarly tube my good man, well I am most certainly amped".

I found myself missing Tash a lot during this time, but recognise, for only selfish reasons, it would be easier to have some help in the things that needed to be done and of course as we are all aware, the world is a far less scary place when you are not on your own. Mind you I have found it to be considerably cheaper and am really very thankful for that. The very last of Tash's eBay auctions finished in mid December, which was contributory to the toughness mentioned above, it really wasn't a wardrobe of clothes, more of a proper fashion collection, so in parts, the jackets particularly, there was a lot of emotional pain involved, solved by subverting the notion of an eBay description into a nostalgic reminiscences for each piece. This all went down quite well and kept the usual eBay nutcase's away, thankfully.

I don't know if you have ever seen the film Finding Neverland, it is a Johnny Depp number in which he portrays J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan in partly true, partly fictionalised account of his relationship with a widow and her three sons, one of who is the inspiration for Peter Pan. The three of us, team food:Swanage, Lesley, Jason and I, took a welcome break from planning the complexities of the upcoming Christmas menu and associated planning of the comestible purchasing (it was to be a operation of military proportions), on the Monday before Christmas to sit in front of the telly for a bit. As luck would have it, or more accurately, the TV scheduling provides at this time of year, instead of the early evening news, we found Mr Depp and his note perfect Scottish accent. Hopefully I will not give too much of the story away by commenting that there really is no better celluloid description of the poeticness of death, it is a truly beautiful film and even though I have seen it before and it made me cry then, even before Tash, I was happy to sit through the unfolding loveliness again aware that the story portrayed on the TV was allegorical for the one person we would liked to have been with us at that moment. I choked with 40 minutes to go, but bravely (in a manly fashion) shielded my eyes from the other two and carried intently watching.... breathing from my mouth in that extremely unsubtle way that declares "my nose is full of crying snot!", but I am trying to be discrete. As soon as the credits rolled Lesley made a break for the toilet and Jason came over and hugged me and we cried together for a bit. The three of us met up in the kitchen next, all wet eyes and emotion. What can you do at a time like this, when you are with people who you trust enough to be this vulnerable with and are sharing such a poignant moment...... Well we jumped in the car and took our togetherness to the insanity that is a pre-Christmas food shopping trip of course, survived, came home and got pissed.

This years 25th of December was relaxed, indulgent with the finest food and very unchristmassy. I thank you for the texts and phone calls enquiring after my krimble state and can report that my day was in fact pleasantly calm, after working through much of the darker emotions in the previous weeks. That is not to say that the whole period was not without upset, my Christmas eve ended in welcome floods of tears and an understanding that I am perfectly able to get myself in a state reading my own Taooftash updates as everyone else.

Boxing day heralded the beginning of the departure circuit with the arrival of Mother and then on the Saturday, my brother Peter, his wife Frieda, my nephew Gavin and of most significance, Tash's step-brother Jeremy and his girlfriend Natalie. You know why Jezza is here, I type, hoping that you have actually have read the previous post, so it with great pride that he was introduced to the family as my brother in law.

Because I was about to leave, we had to have a round of photographs, but typically we do things in our own way.

Of course no family portrait is complete without...

With the new year just starting came the comment from Jason, "I am glad your year is over", he was right of course and my defender once more articulated the very thing that many of you have thought. The comment upset me, but not by who said it or his sentiment, which was all positive. It is just I really struggle to see last year as negative, A strange comment I appreciate, and the following you must understand is in my singular, not for Tash, or my work for Tash, I had four years to come to terms with the conditions I readily accepted when asking her to be my wife, and when it came for her to leave I could see no loss, it is, I analogised to Lesley, like eating a cake and then crying when it is finished, you knew what you were doing so why complain when it is gone. What I take from last year is the extraordinary love, affection, and care that Tash and I experienced between ourselves, from our friends and through to complete strangers and I also choose to remember that though one of us was lost, there are now six new babies in our world.

After leaving the UK I received many emails, one suspects because most of you couldn't remember the bloody date I was going and encountered my new answer machine message. Graham, who I went up to see in the last post, dropped me a line and included the below, Robyn is their three year old;

A story from Christmas. While you were here Robyn did not ask about Tash once which was really quite strange as she talked about "Mark 'n Tash" lots before you arrived. After you left she did ask in a very shy roundabout way where Tash was and why you were on your own. Then at Christmas dinner the strangest thing happened. In the middle of a rare quiet moment in the Johnston household Robyn turns and asks her Gran, "Do you know about my friend Tash?" Silence from Lindsay and me. Bemusement from the rest of the assembled crowd. Robyn then told the whole table about her friend Tash and how she was unwell and how she had to go the hospital and how "the doctors couldn't fix her" and how she had died but "it was all okay". Lindsay and I were of course in tears. The rest of the table remained bemused! Such is life and the beautiful mind of a three year old but it remains a fact that you are both still with her and you are both still with us, wherever you both may be.