Going home

Home is no longer here, West Yorkshire calls louder by the minute. The cockerel crowing his ownership of his clan to be replaced by muddy fields, straw bedding and uncomplaining horses. We fly around, taking planes like the buses of our youth, seeking the frisson and the challenge of new places and ones we know well. Every trip is a new trip to new destination, some of which happen to  hold old friends in their welcoming arms. There is still romance in travel, in watching the houses and people shrink, as if taking Alice’s potion, as the silver bird powers her way skyward. The occasional glimpse of the ground not touched as the clouds part temporarily, the vastness of the desert, mountain or seascape as we pass by observing but not touching. Does our presence in eyes only make a difference to those below? Perhaps not, yet it changes me. The dots of the boats with their comet tails transporting who knows what to who knows where. Reminiscent of dhows on a Dubai Creek front, loading their Chinese tyres, Brazilian deck chairs, Pakistani spices…  Delights from the vastness of the globe gathered here at dockside waiting for their final sea journey to a welcoming new home. Innocent and ignorant of their origin of their fate yet stacked proudly and brightly in the unremitting sunlight. They move from home to home, as do I.