I started the 'Passengers in Time' blog at the end of 2010. I'm not the most prolific blogger but I suppose I've averaged about ten posts a year here on this blog. I've covered a variety of topics from books that I'd been reading to books that I'd been writing, and from music I'd been listening to, to occasionally music I'd been making. Alongside these adventures with books and music has been a third thread - 'time travel', by which I suppose I've meant a blend of reminiscences, social history and real-life travel. My posts have often been written in a voice that suggested these were accounts of solitary adventures but, in reality, whether it was walking in Shropshire, drinking coffee in Chepstow, Chipping Norton or Keswick, wandering round lavender fields in Yorkshire, exploring disused railways lines on Dartmoor or ruined castles in Northumberland, staying in windmills in Sussex, appreciating Japanese art at Hanbury Hall, cycling in Kent, picnicking in Paris, visiting chilli farms and Sherman tanks in Devon or enjoying medieval festivals in Tewkesbury, through all of these experiences I'd been accompanied by my dear travelling companion - my beloved wife Sue.
Reviewing the blog's activity over the years, it's noticeable that my blog posts became less frequent in the second half of 2018. This coincided with Sue being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Through much of 2019, Sue enjoyed reasonably good health and I continued to blog fairly regularly, chronicling some of our trips - to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to Portsmouth to view the recovered 16th-century ship the Mary Rose (which Sue had always wanted to see), to a very unusual concert by Sue's favourite pagan speed folk band PerKelt as well as the last concert we attended together - a China Crisis gig, and an account of our very last holiday together in Devon.
At the beginning of this year Sue's health deteriorated so that, by the time the coronavirus pandemic had forced everyone into lock-down, Sue and I had already stopped going out and about. Sue was too poorly to go anywhere and I had become a full-time carer. And then, on 25 June, Sue passed away.
The things that normally console, comfort, energise and enthuse me: reading, listening to music, writing, songwriting, all feel like an effort at the moment, but I know they still hold the power to sustain and renew me. This blog has become an archive - of the books and music I've enjoyed, of the places we've been and the things we've done; it felt wrong to go on writing 'Passengers in Time' blog posts as if nothing had happened, without acknowledging the loss of Sue. I'm going to try to keep on blogging and to go on documenting my adventures with books, music ...and, of course, time travel.
Sue was always very proud of my writing and I'm sure she would have wanted me to continue, but things are bound to be rather different, now that I've lost my travelling companion.
In memory of Sue Gillam (1965-2020).
