Bumble
After months of roaming and pondering in this adventure, we have finally decided to go back home, for good – well, for a while at least – to be reunited with Budgie, but more importantly with family, friends, Bumble the dog, and good old Blighty.
We’ve taken this decision for various reasons and we’re really happy about it now. It’s funny how you try really hard to make something work and when you stop struggling and you finally surrender, liberation follows. Up to one week ago, we were still quite sad to see the Canadian experience end, but now we are really excited to leave. Our life is no longer here.
We came to admit also that we might not have been able to enjoy it eternally. Something is missing: another dimension. I felt the same in California. A sense of emptiness. It took me a lot of time to realise what was bothering me. It’s so much easier to react against things that are ever too present, jarring or downright irritating, but this particular vacuity is trickier to capture with thoughts. It’s a vague, lingering sensation. California felt like living on a movie set, and it’s not that much different here.
Crow
Our friend Graham who is also going back to England soon, discussed it with Ed the other day, and it was the little epiphany I needed about this place. It is so beautiful that you would feel really ungrateful to resent its flaws. Beauty in that respect can be incredibly intimidating. Doesn’t one feel a bit more shy when they meet a really good looking person? You almost hope you belong to their club somehow. It’s absurd but it’s a common impulse.
The same happened for us in Vancouver, it’s so beautiful that you want to be a part of it. However this has a price, the real estate is unaffordable, the general cost of life is prohibitive, and the job situation is scarily unstable. Testament to its charms, people are still ready to make the sacrifice, for the sake of enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and the ever-changing unbeatable scenery.
Well, we sure will miss a lot of things here, but there are so many people and things that we’re happy to find again in Europe two weeks from now. Among other things, and in no particular order: cheese, bread, being able to afford most things and food, pubs, the English countryside, the Atlantic coast, picnics in the park, sunshine, charity shops and boot sales, Habitat, having a vehicle, the museums, the fashion, Waitrose, the wittiness, English gardens, Neil’s Yard Remedies, Hampstead, Portugal, our tagine dish, jam, ham, etc.
View from Royal Crescent by Rachel Milne
It’s all been a great adventure and we’ve learnt so much from it, and we will come back to Europe with a fresh perspective, and then lose it again, and then find other ways to entertain our restlessness. Abraham Lincoln said “and in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
We’re full of life and as Frank Costanza says in Seinfeld: ‘I’m Back, Baby!’
The Budgie Spirit 