Real Life -When The Trip Is Over!

We are home, we drop our bags in the guest bedroom and try and work out what time of day it is inside our bodies.
We had woken up on our last day at 7 a.m. which is pretty normal for us and left our hotel in New York at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, travelled by taxi (as a treat!) to JFK airport which seemed to take forever. No wonder they charge so much for a taxi, it was only 18 miles and yet it took the best part of an hour and a half!
Our driver was from Central America, we knew because he spoke Mexican Spanish on his mobile to his wife twice whilst we were in the car. His English wasn’t great so we had that awkward trip where you aren’t sure whether to talk to each other whilst ignoring him or attempt to make conversation with him in stilted English. We chose the former.

Our flight wasn’t scheduled until 7.30 p.m. but we had decided to camp out at the airport rather than hang around the hotel lobby. Both of us are very much the type of people that once the day to go home arrives we just want to leave. We hate having to hang around. It’s definitely one of those “beam me up Scotty moments” where you just want to press a button and land in your living room without everything else in-between.

In between for us was an overnight flight into Heathrow, a train journey with two changes and then a trip by car from the train station to the front door. It is 9 a.m. in New York and with about 3 hrs sleep on the plane, which in itself is a miracle for me, I’ve been awake for the best part of 24 hrs.
We decide to lock the front door, draw the bedroom curtains and take a 3 hr nap. It’s nice to be back in our own bed having slept in more beds than I can remember in the last 6 months.

The next day, week and month envelop me in a cloud of unreality. It has felt really weird. We have been alone, just the two of us against the world, for the last 6 months whilst travelling. I’ve loved it. I am so lucky to have found my person whilst in the midlife stage of life. We are so compatible, intellectually on the same wavelength, both able to compromise and wanting the best for each other. It is so easy being in this relationship. But suddenly we have neighbours, family, friends, acquaintances and most of all life to deal with.
Everyone reacts differently to our being home.
Some are genuinely interested in our travels and cannot wait to hear about it. Others brush over the subject as if we’ve only been away for a weekend and have very little to say. I can feel a mixture of awe, excitement, disparity and even some evidence of envy in our conversations. Some friends have stayed in touch over the internet or by phone during our travels, a few we haven’t heard from?

There are definitely moments when I want to press that “Scotty button” and transport myself back to lunch in the Turia Park in Valencia, the winding cobbled streets of Cordoba, Elmers Bottle Tree Ranch in Orio Grande or Hudson’s Seafood House on Hilton Head sitting eating a seafood broil and fried green tomatoes.

I hadn’t thought about what it was going to be like to be back home in our own house, in the Cotswolds, in England, in the UK! I certainly didn’t imagine I would feel so lost.
During the trip I had read little news. My husband is a bit of a news fiend but he knows better than to impart what he reads to me. He knows me well enough that if I want to know something specific I’ll ask or research it myself.
I had taken a day off to watch the King’s Coronation on television in Holland in May but it had all seemed a bit surreal, a bit like watching a true episode of The Crown! I felt totally detached from it.

The reality of being home really hit me about three weeks in. I wanted to pick up our house and transplant it somewhere else. Where ? I didn’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to be where we were.
I wanted to be close to my family and friends and able to restart my hobbies and interests. My husband had sold his work’s vehicle before we left in March and was now definitively retired and I have to say adapting well to the transition. He also has his own hobbies and interests.
I found myself envying the Americans purely for the space. The country is so huge there is just endless amounts of space.
Memories of driving through Georgia with its thick forests on either side and steaming swampland remind me of books like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or ‘Where the Crawdads Sing”. Neither were based in Georgia but the landscape felt the same. Impenetrable and solitary.
You could basically buy a mobile home or wooden lodge and put it down anywhere in the “sticks” and to be honest no one would know. You could easily stay hidden from society.

England suddenly felt really claustrophobic. Even in the countryside, unless you have loads of money to buy a secluded cottage, it suddenly feels like we are all living on top of one another. I definitely feel discombobulated.

I know I’m lucky that I don’t have to go back to work but in some ways it might have been easier to just return to a routine and work my way out of this post travelling bubble.

There is a part of me that is angry. Looking at the state of our country. Having been away for 6 months it’s like returning to somewhere I no longer recognise. I feel like I’m the only one who wants to challenge the status quo, to ask all the questions that I’m sure a lot of folk have on the tips of their tongue, but are too afraid to utter. What is happening here? Why are we concreting over the beautiful countryside to constantly build more and more houses. Why are the Government being allowed to continue this path of outright corruption and disregard for the everyday people? When is someone going to wake up and realise that two party politics no longer works?
They just basically spend their time undoing what the previous Government has done, blaming all their problems and issues on previous right or left wing parties in power depending upon who is currently in control. It was no different in America.

I want the young people, the 18- 40 year olds to wake up. To use all their social media knowledge to create a political storm that makes all these MP’s who are so out of touch with reality to wake up and change or be overthrown in favour of someone younger. Someone who isn’t a Labour or Conservative believer but who cares about the things that matter: the NHS, the housing crisis, immigration, the reality of climate change, the failure of Brexit, the demise of a country so stuck in it’s past and most of all -the lack of hope for our under 40’s. What will it take to wake everyone up?

In the meantime I want to pick up my house and drop it on some remote island somewhere where we can go back to just us two against the world!

I have to make a conscious effort to push all this negativity away and focus upon our future. To imagine what our little house can be once we have been home for a year. How wonderful our life is together and I have to make a concerted effort to settle back in to real life! Part of real life for us is planning our next holiday or period of extended travelling. Canada beckons. Driving from East to West and everything in between.
I need to find another planning website. I’ve always used Inspirock but Klana took it over a year ago and after, I’m guessing not making an equal success of it, shut it down with no notice on August 23rd. All my previous trips and some we had already started to look at in the future were lost at the press of someone’s button. I’ve tried to ask them why but being a massive conglomerate they don’t care about us mere travellers. Even though people are raising the issue on line, all around the world, including one poor couple who lost their honeymoon plans, Klana continues to remain silent and ignore us!

Posting on my blog still brings me joy. It’s lovely to know people are out there reading it and I have a few more posts from this latest trip to write about plus plenty of previous adventures already in draft so stick with me, give me your feedback, tell your friends and family about it and I’ll see you again soon x