Visitors come and visitors go and almost immediately it’s hard to believe they were here at all.

My sister C and her youngest arrived a week ago. And left yesterday. They travelled from their African Outpost to mine and the days rushed past in such a blur I cannot now remember what happened from one day to the next.

It was a joy to hear my small, too-quiet home ring with the sound of a child’s laughter, to watch K swim, to listen to her ceaseless chatter, to observe her, too-long -limbed, unbrushed hair, starfish sprawled on a bed rendered still and silent only because she had a book to hand. Immersed in some other far away world.

And I think of my Hat and how she filled all my Outpost days first time around. Ten Years ago: I first arrived here Ten Years Ago.

We walked on the dam, we ate too much ice-cream, we watched telly that made us laugh, we swam endlessly, we played cards and we teased Mum so that she responded in mock horror: ‘don’t give Gran another biscuit, she’s verging on the morbidly obese as it is’. K shrieks with mirth, my sister giggles at Mum’s expression. Precious, precious days of nothing and everything. Family touching hands, re-connection, brief, blessed. I want to distill these days, to bottle them as heavenly scent that I may pop the lid and inhale deeply whenever I need to feel less lonely.

And when they leave I am momentarily unhinged. A day of floating aimlessly. Until I can find my groove, where my head goes back down, my shoulder to the wheel and I get on with the business of Getting on with It.