#maggie rigby

[stevefordphotos]

The Maes performing on the Moreton Bay Stage at WOMADelaide 2019. L to R, Elsie Rigby, Maggie Rigby, Monique Clare.

www.womadelaide.com.au

https://www.facebook.com/themaesband/

© 2019 Steve Ford

[amostpeculiarplace-blog]

As Long As The End Isn't Back At The Start

Don't tell anyone else Stockholm, but I'll be glad to end this one man, traveling show tomorrow. You are infinitely lovely, don't get me wrong, it's just I'm tiring of doing this on my own. You have all the grandeur of Paris' boulevards, but instead of car flooded lanes, your harbour is criss-crossed by boats that will take me to the same eight stops for only one hundred SEK. And I'd better use every single one up before I leave here because swapping currencies every three days is becoming trying. 

Your Kronor are different to Denmark's and Norway's. They look so Russian to me for some reason, but we'll pretend I didn't say that, you seem to me the proud type that probably wouldn't welcome being compared to another nation. And that's something I really can't fathom. You see I'm from a place patch worked with so many nations that it's sometimes hard to identify with the one word written under 'Nationality' on my passport, let alone feel patriotic toward it. The undiluted, Swedish traits in the faces of your people remind me of my watered down, one eighth friends back home, who wear your patch proudly along with their seven other. How different it must be to be one whole and no remainder. 

Oh and your history Stockholm! It runs so deep, and your clever little comrades uproot it from the depths of your harbour, reconstruct it, and charge me eighty SEK to see it. I wish my dad were here Stockholm. He would love that ship! You may have guessed it, perhaps I'm not that great an actress, but I wasn't entirely interested in your three-hundred year old, Vasa shipwreck. I came here for him really, and it was only pretending that he was beside me, excitedly explaining what 'balast' meant, that made me appreciate it too.

Oh don't take that to heart now Stockholm. I've been away, just my back pack and I, nearly ten days now and there is only so much experience that I can bring to life myself. It's not you, it's just I'm running out of new things to say to places like you and Oslo; to myself. I've met people along the way, had a chat and found the common things, but mostly it's just been my backpack and I. And I've always preferred a bottle of red, a blank notebook, and a newly tuned guitar to stepping one foot out into the world and all its people, but lately I've been craving this person and that, calling them up to come round and share my wine. How I wish some of them were here with us now. 

But I'm trying not to think of them whilst I'm with you. That would just be plain rude. I've brought Jonathan Franzen along with me and I'll pull him out when I've exhausted every one-sided, conversation topic whilst walking around with you, in all your pretty colours. I'm happy to spend these last few days with you, Stockholm, really I am. I even wrote as much home. Just as long as this is the end. Because lone traveling is lovely, everything I've got strapped onto my back and locked in my mind, but it's not everything I need, and I'm getting weary of my own company, my own ideas, my own dreadful sense of direction, and having all the responsibility on my own head. You are wonderful Stockholm, you really are, but you are just a city of brick and stone, and you cannot respond to my conversation, or marvel with me at the splendour of your own harbour. You don't tell me I'm silly and conceited, better or worse than the person I thought I always was, or simply hold the map for an hour, and lead me to the right place.

Let's see out the end of this last day together Stockholm, celebrate all the glitches that have not arisen, all the ferries caught, the right trains boarded, every hostel found in the wee hours of the morning, but don't be offended when I'm happy to board my train at your Central Station tomorrow. It's no sign of weakness to admit I'm not enough alone, or ready, after an awfully big adventure, to go home. That's what I'm telling myself anyway, how very convenient that you cannot reply.