Flippy of course also used the house at Ferndale for his own "retreats". It was when I discovered a cryptic note in his handwriting about what he should chose to do, covered with fingernail clippings, then later finding that there were fingernail clippings on top of the cairn in the cedar grove that I realized he was a likely Satanist. I could be wrong, but I have my doubts.
Suffice it to say that he was finally gone and good riddance.
Dippy was driving Dopey crazy and Dopey came to live with me at the house to get away from her and the young mentally ill drug addict she had fallen in love with and invited to live with them. Then I got messed up with the Wannabe Rock Star. I came into some money from my mother's death and was intent on leaving my old life behind. We went to London together. I paid his way then got rid of him in Edinburgh after realizing what a hideous error I'd made.
I was in London, alone and for the first time really, really free. I planned to live there if I could. I met people, only the wrong ones, and gradually came to the conclusion that I would be eventually returning to Canada. Dopey and I corresponded in the days before there was email and she made to me a very convincing case that I had to return. Dippy was destroying everything with her crazy drugged-up boyfriend who had taken up residence with her in Shiloh House. And yes they were shagging each other if you really have to know, Gentle Reader. Dopey invoked the two magic words, "you're needed" and that's all it took. I hope now that I'm older and hopefully wiser that if I ever hear again those two insidious powerful words "you're needed" that I will have the good common sense to run the other way fast.
I did have a ton of money with me in Europe, some of which the Wannabe Rock Star had extorted from me, and some which was stolen from me at knifepoint in Amsterdam. I knew it wouldn't last, and I knew also that this intoxicatingly delicious freedom would soon come to an end. I could only live from bed and breakfast to pension to hotel room for so long without going slowly and steadily crazy from this lack of feeling grounded for too long. But it was summer, I was free, and the long walks from museum to park to café, to pub to restaurant to wherever my restless legs would carry me was a joy unbridled and I had no intention of losing this freedom again.
I didn't so much lose the new freedom as reluctantly give it up. I could not in good conscience let either of those two pathetic naïfs, Dippy and Dopey, come to harm because I had somehow lured them into this bizarre and thankless work of Christian ministry. I also knew that I really had no prospects waiting for me in London nor anywhere in Europe. My place was Vancouver, doing my share to help mop up a mess I had helped create.
Don't weep that it's over...Smile because it happened!
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