We crossed into Belgium just after 07.00 hrs this morning and headed straight to Calais. The hovercraft crossing was delayed by an hour because of a technical fault…
…reared up like roaring monster, great climax then deflated
I guess this could apply to many things in life.
After the crossing, it was straight back onto the coach and then passing quickly through passport control. My baggage was delayed and a little bit battered – a couple of loops were broken, but a kind customs officer helped me to re-attach the pack to the frame. Good news though – my bottle of ouzo was intact!
We arrived at Victoria Coach station around 19.10 hrs. I walked to the main train station and bought my ticket for East Croydon. Strangely but probably characteristically, I did not record any further details of my arrival home. I think my dad met me at the station. I know the house was adorned with a “Welcome Home” banner and I can only imagine the sense of relief my parents must have felt to have me safely home. But they probably wondered who this bedraggled, long-haired and bearded guy was!
My diary entries were very intermittent from this day forward and the current notebook saw me through to May 1975. Even then, almost half of the pages remained blank. There may have been intermediary notebooks during this period. It is not as if nothing much happened during the following months – I started my nurse training course, got more involved in performance poetry, lived in the nurses’ hostel, had a Spanish girlfriend, travelled to France with my Australian friend Jon…and on and on and on.
More than two years later, I was still making references to my Big Trip. Maybe this is why I am finding it difficult to end this series of posts. In many ways, it was a beginning. As I have noted elsewhere in these posts, the experiences I had were fundamental in shaping my development. They formed a sedimentary layer of my life, traces of which randomly find their way to the surface. It is one of many layers that, as for us all, form the foundations of our being. The stability of these foundations vary between people and across time within us as individuals. It is not surprising that we speak of seismic events in our lives, when these layers shift and fold in response to the forces and pressures of life. Psychology as geology.
The process of writing these posts has obviously activated this layer, like a dormant volcano beginning to stir, and it has been difficult to be completely in the present. Nostalgia, reflection, a bit of melancholy, but mostly gratitude and thanks – to all the people I met, the strangers who were so generous and kind to me, and ultimately to the universe for keeping me safe.
Thank you to everyone who has accompanied me on this blogging journey. Now I am looking for a new project! Suggestions welcomed…
Psychologist on the Move 