Why Travel

To begin a ream of travel writing I guess it might be best to start from scratch – as in from home, where writing about travel is confined to what I make up on the spot. While I do, currently, spend the vast majority of my time in America, that is University and not, as it were, my general perception and situation in/on life.
In London I am at home, and so this is my home base, and this is where I will start from scratch. I don’t travel here, I am living. Conscious as I am of this fact, I try to capture snapshots of life, and tell you about them. Once I get moving (travelling) away from my home base I’ll still keep trying to convey those snapshots to you, things that I would most want you to read, and hopefully touch on some of the tourist in you.
There is one moment I always remember, and for me holds all the thrill of observation within it. I was 18 and had just left school. As was the (justified) rite of passage for those coming out of an English boarding school life, I bought an Inter-rail pass (Eurail if you’re American), flew to Amsterdam, and began to manoeuvre my way through Europe.
It happened when my travelling partner was asleep on the train and I was staring out of the window at the increasingly Mediterranean landscape develop outside the carriage. I think we were in Italy at this point, it was sunny, hot and dry. I had not slept for four nights (I do not know why) and was approaching delirium, or more likely at it, when behind my sunglasses I began to pour with tears. I felt so intensely the freedom of leaving an institution, the freedom of being alone, the freedom of wandering, and the freedom on wonderment that it suddenly overtook me. My heart felt like it was glowing, and I could not believe the beauty of everything around me, whether it was nice or not. That moment is why my heart jumps every time I get on a bus or board a plane. I had experienced joy that I had never imagined possible, and I sat utterly rigid, weeping for ten full minutes – every second of it a delight.
On a rugby tour to Argentina two years later those sunglasses fell off a boat into the sea.

In any case, this blog will bounce topics around a bit. A lot happens when you look at the whole world.