Monday 4 August 2014

Suitcases, showers, and unfamiliar cutlery

Back home if only very briefly after travelling all afternoon. I would not have even come back, but there are only so many trips one can make with a large suitcase that is about to fall apart! It was time I returned at least to unpack and re-pack a smaller, lighter, and more portable load. This week I will be up and down the country until the end of the week when I plan to return to the south for some more road trips along the south coast to see friends and visit beaches and embrace some more of this life.

Everything is the same, yet in the same breathe everything is different too. I know this is possible; it is the difference between what we see, what we know, and what we feel. It is almost like reading the same story written by two authors worlds apart. Yet it is startlingly clear to me today. I have been gone long enough to get back into my car and it takes a while to find the bite in my clutch again. It is an odd feeling, but I do know this feeling very well. I enjoy the newness and I know when I wake tomorrow it will be gone so I almost want to hold onto it for as long as I can. Perhaps this is why I am going again. Perhaps this is why prolonging the 'return' is what I do best. Turning the shower on is not an instinctive move of the hand, the cutlery does not feel right in my hands, the trains and tubes are not as I have grown accustomed to, I have to force my brain to think in English and not constantly try to translate my 'thank you' to a poorly pronounced 'gracias'. My clothes feel different on my body, my taste for coffee is changed, and my wardrobes are full of the rubbish that I do not need. Things are the same yet vastly different. I am glad I will not stop moving for the next couple of weeks. This being said, it is good to stop off home. A brief stop, but a good stop. In fact, no one is home so I am enjoying being quite alone for the evening.

It was also good to be reunited with my sister at the weekend after over a month. We had both been on our own travels and to see her blonde head walking up to me as I waited to meet her at Kings Cross was simply wonderful. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. Birmingham tomorrow for another reunion with my Spanish friend, room mate, and dearest soul mate. And to return with a little more ginger in the hair....


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