This Is This

It sounds corny, but it’s only after seventeen years, and after finally publishing this story, that I feel like the trip is finally over.

Life is different now. We have mobile phones, we can send emails, we can get money out of an ATM when we are travelling. Many European countries use the same currency, but then I was at the mercy of my wits most of the time, and that wasn’t much to go on.

Seventeen years on, I have a credit card, and a house and a job and a family. I can spend £500 in an afternoon when I’m on the road, although I’m not sure technically how much of the road I’d be on, travelling these days.

I don’t have any regrets, but there are things I would have done differently. I should have taken more pictures. I took a big SLR camera which I used for half a dozen photos, which you’ve seen here. I shouldn’t have taken my camping stove, which I used once to cook macaroni in the Pyranees and tea in Amsterdam. I used it a couple of times in Arcachon but only because I had it with me.

And I should have called home more. It was selfish and I even knew that at the time, but the trip was my time before getting a job and settling down and waking up and rushing to work at the start of the week. I was doing something I felt I had to do, for all of those reasons.

I should have left Claus in Istanbul. Your first impressions of someone are often right, there are lots of different kinds of people in the world and life’s too short to be friends with all of them.

I probably should not have given Benson the money - I can’t be certain if I was conned. He sent me a postcard, for which I had to pay the postage, six months later, asking me to send money for a winter coat which he could not afford. Maybe he was honest. Maybe he returned to Nigeria and he’s sending emails asking for people’s bank details. I’ll never know.

Then there are my old school friends, with whom I stayed in Aquitaine. Kara’s living in Amsterdam and Sian’s a mother of two. I lost touch with James and Aimee, who I had a bit of a thing with. I think Tesni lives in Spain, and I know Patrick is a writer who lives in Australia. Zarya works in PR in London and I still see her occasionally. Lindsay works in music publishing in Germany, and he went to Southampton University with Luke who died unexpectedly in 1993 in the house they shared. This is for him.

Also on This Is This
It must be hard being a sidekick.Tonto, Prescott, Rubble, Oates, Gareth from The Office. Sidekicks generally are rubbish.
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 8:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.