Going Home

We had an extremely long and boring wait for our plane to depart from Germany, and we were both knackered.  Still, at least the shops were more exciting for Caroline so she had a bit of a look around.  As for me, my allergies had decided to play up that day, turning me into The Phlegm King of the North, which left me feeling very miserable and sorry for myself.  I sat back at a coffee shop, and worked on a big crossword in the Weekly World News (Headline: "I Was Bigfoot's Sex Slave Says Lumberjack".)  Needless to say, it couldn’t hold my attention for long, and I looked around at the big departure sign behind me.  

So many destinations.  Rome – Bangkok – Vienna – Hong Kong – Durban.  It went on and on.  It was tempting – so tempting – to turn my back on responsibility and blow all my remaining savings to investigate the world just that little bit more.

Not that Caro and I had even scratched the surface of the places we had been.  If only I could book on Hindsight Tours, and revisit New Zealand but ensure I went to the South Island this time.  If only I could reassure myself that I really did have enough money to go island-hopping in Hawaii.  If only I’d had another week in New Orleans…

That’s the nature of travel.  It’s only when you stop moving that you get a chance to look back at all the places you loved, and see all those people you met waving back at you.  I’d wondered if all this travel would knock the Englishness out of me somehow, and leave me an Experienced Man of The World.  It hadn’t of course, that same scruffy little man who had left the UK one year earlier was the same one returning.  However, he was now a scruffy little man with memories.  

I turned my back on the departure board, still busily clacking through destinations and headed back to the coffee shop.  Caro was waiting for me there.

“Jesus F*CKING christ!” she greeted me.  “Some German bastard in the duty free shop farted all over me in the queue!”

So much for memories.  It was time to go home.