A lot can happen in the space of year to make you question your motivations, your priorities, and your insights. I can't say truthfully that I am an entirely different person this year than I was the year before, but I do know that I have changed immensely. Exactly one year ago yesterday I sat anxiously on the plane to England. I sat next to a girl named Jasmine, a stranger, who I now know to be one of my closest friends. I haven't anything eloquent to say about it all really, except that I miss it a lot...more than I thought possible. Somehow, despite the fact that everyone keeps telling me I will start to miss it less and less, my need for England, for it's people, it's gothic buildings, it's uneven cobbled streets by the Bod, a cup of tea from Combibo's, or a chicken strips meal from Branos.
Thankfully, after the agony that was yesterday I received two items in the mail today, marked by the Royal Mail. One was a parcel full of Party Rings and Tea, accompanied by a note from Alice. The other was a note from Rob. And despite the utter agony that is going about my day to day life without these people and so many others in it, there are small reminders that I will have them with me forever. And sometimes that's all you can really ask or hope for.
I can't really say it any better than Bill Bryson:
"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain--which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad--Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying "mustn't grumble" and "I'm terribly sorry but", people apologizing when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sunday--every bit of it.
What a wondrous place this was--crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ("Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue"). What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardner's Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfar state--in short, did nearly everything right--and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things--to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.
All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you"
--Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island)
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