Here we are. My last column as Manx Bard, and I must admit that thinking up what to write this month was a challenge.

I considered how this challenge will be no more after I write this final column and say ta-ta for now to you all… which sent me off happily down a philosophical rabbit hole to find the inspiration for my final feature - farewells.

There’s a place I visit in my dreams that doesn’t exist anywhere on Earth. I’ve never been able to pin it on a map, but I know it better than I know most real locations. Everything exists happily there, even that houseplant I forgot to water in 2019.

It’s the kind of place where your childhood dog still runs to greet you, tail wagging, breath warm, as if no time has passed. Your grandparents are younger somehow, always mid-laugh or mid-hug, never mid-goodbye.

There’s a perfect café that only ever serves the exact thing you’re craving, and the sky is always just the right shade of pink and orange.

It’s comforting, really. Like my brain made its own version of heaven using leftover bits of memory, wishful thinking, and whatever weird code is responsible for the recurring dreams in which I’m late for PE and have also forgotten my kit…

In this place, I’m always the best version of myself. Not in a smug way - I still spill drinks and walk into glass doors. But the shame never sticks.

I know, of course, that it’s not real. Every morning, I wake up and the world is still the world. I stub my toe. That plant is still dead. But I carry the softness of that dream-place with me, like a jumper that still smells like home.

I think we all need a place like that - real or imagined - to escape to. A place where things don’t break, or leave, or grow old. A place where your heart isn’t always bracing for the next goodbye.

So if tonight you find yourself in a dream, walking a familiar path that never really existed, stay a while.

And when you wake, take a breath and carry it with you. Even if your hair immediately forgets how to behave again.

pink and orange skies

I sleep to wake in another dimension

each night I close my eyes

hoping for ascension

to this dreamlike place

with pink and orange skies

and an unsetting sun

an invention of my unconscious mind

wildflowers lie unspoiled

in sempiternal meadows

the glossy sheen of purple and green

in the starlings’ feathers as they murmurate

create kaleidoscopic effect

their movements perfect

having practised their display

in the sweet-scented air

since the inception of this paradise

like it, they are ageless

as time does not apply here

nothing need be sacrificed

nothing is destined to disappear

the fruit in the bowl stays ripe

the starlings will forever fly

people I love will never die

in this place

with pink and orange skies

there is no need to say goodbye