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Today, I'm regretting not having a passport. Otherwise, I' be making a serious effort to jet my lame behind to the other side of the Atlantic. Considering how this country came to be, Virginia is basically England-Lite. Place names, identical... pronunciation suffers, but the spelling is the same. We're raised with the same manners, and the same failings. Fewer rats, but more bugs. The chunk of hill that I now own was deeded by the Crown, not so many hundred years ago. The quarter of my heritage that I've had any contact with (my maternal grandmother) has always considered us black sheep... probably because we're not sufficiently Americanized, too-oft divorced or something. Grandma's marriage to a Finn (regardless how briefly) didn't help matters, nor her booking passage to Saskatchewan with him in the late 1920's. A female cousin (another divorc�e) told them all to shove off, and has lived in London for most of her life. This is all starting to sound like a broken record... or a theme. Let's call this practical fantasizing. Let's also call it "shit or get off the pot." This is my idea of what going on holiday should be... actually seeing more of what the world is made of. In between mind-numbing jobs, I've been checking out air fares and other particulars... sizing up possibilities. I'd had a chance to go back in Spring, when Elly had gotten some friends together with a similar aim. Things were just a bit more harmonious at home, at the time,so I'd ditched the idea out-of-hand. Doesn't seem so farfetched, at this point. Besides, some justification is in order for by backyard full of rotting Cortinas, my dusty record collection of Merseybeat and '70's punk, and this Arsenal shirt on my back. It's been a generation since my three-month bicycle trip across the USA. I am ultra-ripe for a step out of the rut. It may mean sacrificing a house in the near future (which looks a bit dodgy at the moment, anyway), but I'll not walk this planet forever. And need a jumpstart so bad I can taste it. But first, to get on the other side of a lens for a passport photo. I'm usually looking through the viewfinder, not at the flash, so this will begin with a foreign adventure. |
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