Endings
Beginnings are hard to catch. I couldn’t tell you how this all began: perhaps it was when I was sick of university and wanted to get away, perhaps it was when I decied to go to Australia, perhaps it was when I cancelled that trip and got a tattoo, perhaps it was when I booked my tickets, perhaps it was when I got on the plane. But endings? Endings are definite. It’s always easy to work out where something ends. The journey ends here, just where it began, and the world seems so much bigger, and I feel so much smaller, and my brain feels lost and damaged and full of useless anecdotes where my degree used to be. I couldn’t tell you the finer points of web service programming these days, but I do know the average annual rain fall in London and I can compare it to the amount we had in one day out in Franz Josef, when I was out hiking on a glacier in the middle of a rainforest. I don’t know much about agents any more, but I sure as hell know what sun stroke feels like, because I got it, drinking Fiji bitter on the roof of a boat somewhere in the middle of the Yasawa islands. Endings are not sad times, they’re just changing times. Endings are everywhere. One good thing about them is that you can almost guarantee that where an ending is found, there’s a beginning lurking just around the corner. Of course, it’s hard to track it down, because beginnings are hard to define. A lot of things are just beginning in my life, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
After some sleep, of course.
“When you reach the little house, the place where your journey started,
you will recognise it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember,
Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.
And go home. Or make a home.
Or rest.” - Instructions by Neil Gaiman
- Total miles travelled: 30,800
- Hostels stayed in: 25
- Sofas crashed on: 6
- Hotels abused: 5
- Beach resorts lounged in: 5
- Times nearly arrested: 2
- Books read: 24
- Flights taken: 11
- Longest flight: 12 hours
- Longest bus journey: 18 hours
- Longest train journey: 37 hours
- Life-changing events: 4
- Brain-cells killed: 7
A huge thank you to everyone who I met along the way who made it what it was. Special thanks to all my mates in Australia, those who stuck with me for any length of time (James, Romi, Sarah, Helen, Helen - thanks so much), and the super-hospitable folk in America who gave me sofas and beer (Jez, Beth, Nick, and friends), to whom I am forever in debt. You’re all brilliant.