(no subject)
Well, I meant to post while I was away - I've been in Switzerland, skiing - but I just didn't want to, and now that I've got around to sitting down at a computer, all the observations that had built up have kind of dissolved away. The travelling has been ridiculous recently, because as soon as I came back I was flying off to Devon for a work thing, and today I've had to spend all evening on a train to get home again. Sunday night I was in Chamonix, Monday in Geneva, Tuesday in Plymouth, yesterday in Tunbridge Wells and tonight I'll be here, home, hurrah, in Lincoln.
I am left primarily with a lot of jumbled-up impressions of travelling: flying in over Geneva and seeing the fountain spurting up next to the plane; the tiny propellor-driven aircraft that farted me from London to Plymouth - and flying back, the next evening, on a very clear night with the city glowing beneath the plane like a circuit board; and just now, jogging up the country on a train, with Dylan's flawless Modern Times on my iPod-
the midnight rain...
follows the train
-and getting out at Lincoln Central feeling inexplicably wonderful, and seeing a guy over the road standing outside Malabar Junction, steam coming from his box of curry and from out of his mouth.
And I'm also still thinking about the travelling involved in the skiing itself. Maybe that's why I like it so much. I have never been an especially good skier but when I am flying down a mountain, unsure quite whether or not I am able to stop, it is such a happy feeling that I don't even really want to analyse it. There was also the awesomeness of spending time with my friend Alice who lives in Switzerland now, and who is one of those people whose presence in your life for however long seems like a very necessary good.
In short, I feel refreshed and happy - and there are pieces of good news to back it up involving work, which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say we are entering a doubtlessly brief but nonetheless welcome interval of contentment, reinforced I dare say by the fact that I'm now sitting back in my house with a huge cocktail in my hand - a cocktail I just created, prompted by a need to finish up various bottles etc, and containing 3 shots ginger wine, 1 shot whisky, 1 shot Noilly Prat, ice and apple juice. Stir.
It's amazing.
I am left primarily with a lot of jumbled-up impressions of travelling: flying in over Geneva and seeing the fountain spurting up next to the plane; the tiny propellor-driven aircraft that farted me from London to Plymouth - and flying back, the next evening, on a very clear night with the city glowing beneath the plane like a circuit board; and just now, jogging up the country on a train, with Dylan's flawless Modern Times on my iPod-
the midnight rain...
follows the train
-and getting out at Lincoln Central feeling inexplicably wonderful, and seeing a guy over the road standing outside Malabar Junction, steam coming from his box of curry and from out of his mouth.
And I'm also still thinking about the travelling involved in the skiing itself. Maybe that's why I like it so much. I have never been an especially good skier but when I am flying down a mountain, unsure quite whether or not I am able to stop, it is such a happy feeling that I don't even really want to analyse it. There was also the awesomeness of spending time with my friend Alice who lives in Switzerland now, and who is one of those people whose presence in your life for however long seems like a very necessary good.
In short, I feel refreshed and happy - and there are pieces of good news to back it up involving work, which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say we are entering a doubtlessly brief but nonetheless welcome interval of contentment, reinforced I dare say by the fact that I'm now sitting back in my house with a huge cocktail in my hand - a cocktail I just created, prompted by a need to finish up various bottles etc, and containing 3 shots ginger wine, 1 shot whisky, 1 shot Noilly Prat, ice and apple juice. Stir.
It's amazing.