6. On travelling

Dear Readers,

Yesterday, I lied to three hundred children and a dozen grown-ups. I told them that I’d walked and swum for five days to get from the house I grew up in in Cork to the school we were assembled in in Essex. Four hundred and fifty-nine miles over five days. Backstroked across the Irish Sea between somewhere in Louth and somewhere in Wales. Quite a trip. I had a map and everything.

Not a particularly convincing one, but it was enough. Most of them believed me, and wished me luck on my trip back at the end of the day. I also half-convinced them that my middle name was not Fartyknickers but Smartypants. Good times.

The truth is that I got there by bus and by train, a short thirty-one miles. And it was a great journey. The day was cold, and the mist sat low on the flooded fields. Here, look:

I love travelling. With The Muse, with friends, with family, alone. That feeling of displacement, of great movement. Seeing new sights, or the changes in familiar ones. Meeting strangers, wrapping your tongue around new sounds. It’s all good, and really a great privilege. But there are two kinds of trip that I love the best: travelling with purpose, and travelling to see family.

Yesterday my travel had purpose, or the journey felt purposeful. I went to work, and that work was to facilitate some story creation workshops with some brilliant miniature humans. A good kind of work for me.

Today I’m in an airport. I’m not going to bore you with how commercially exploitative airports are because you know about all that. I’m here with thousands of other travellers of all shapes and sizes, all going somewhere.

I’m going back to Cork to see my sisters and my dad, and I’m very excited about it. It hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen each other and we don’t have any plans other than to spend some time together and that is perfect.

Today is a writing day and this letter might be all that I write. And that’s okay too.

Yours sincerely,

Paul