in the company of the warrior princess

Visited the Island. Xena the Warrior Princess lives there nowadays. At least I think it's her, although she is blonde and wearing wellies instead of sandals.

When I arrive after the long drive through forest and across the shockingly tall bridge, spring has painted the sea in glorious colours. The Warrior Princess is changing the tyres on her car and tells me about her upcoming wedding, the wedding she doesn't have the time to plan because she is (more or less single-handedly) restoring the old cottage where she lives.

"The safe feeling of being loved by someone... that is all I really need." The adventurer who tells me this once travelled alone through the darkest parts of Africa and will let nothing stand between her and her dreams. Against everybody's advice, she has almost torn the cottage apart to restore it to its original, beautiful shape. It's still complete chaos, but this girl can make even chaos look welcoming. There are three beautiful cats in the middle of it. One of them is sitting on the laptop.

The car is left standing with only two tyres attached because Xena has spotted something in the attic of the old barn that she absolutely has to investigate right away. So we climb around the ancient attic where the floor threatens to fall apart beneath our feet at any moment. The interesting object turns out to be half an old table and we haul it downstairs at the peril of our own lives.

An elderly man, a genuine soft-spoken Islander and expert on hand-crafted doors, arrives to look at an old door that Xena has found and wants put into the cottage. These old Islanders must be quite shaken up by this blonde tornado that has swept into their little old-fashioned community. Despite this, I have a feeling they can't help but love her. At least they have something to talk about. She has already engaged dozens of them in helping her repair her boat, give advice on the restoration work and tell her all about the history of the Island.

We snack on sandwiches and cheese crisps among the sawdust in the cottage before Xena gets back to sandpapering the walls and trying to persuade me to buy the cottage next door. The idea is too much for me to contemplate.

Driving back across the bridge to the mainland, I'm exhausted as if I had lived a lifetime in one evening.