Wanderlust - Travelling Eternity Road

Like everyone else I’ve been at home for months with little prospect of going anywhere. Luckily, I don’t mind. I’m happy and safe at home, or at my place of work for a couple of days a week. Over time, I’ve become so contented at home that I dread going out to anywhere busy. Social media showed pictures of Blackpool taken this Bank Holiday weekend of the crowded promenade, not a face-mask in sight. I don’t see the resort as getting back on its feet after lockdown, I just see fear, but that’s my problem to overcome. In a few weeks I will be travelling over the border into my beloved Dumfries & Galloway and our home from home – pandemic permitting. I’ll be fine, doing my own thing, keeping to my own space and allowing my wanderlust to take me into Galloway Forest and the quiet, hidden beaches along the Solway Firth. I will have plenty of face-masks.

My photo: somewhere on the west coast of South Uist

I wish we had a motor home or a camper van. In my wanderlust dreams I pack it with everything we need and set off, northbound, stopping wherever the fancy takes us, then destination, the Outer Hebrides. It is another world. We could stay as long as we like and be more relaxed about it. Up to now, our trips have been governed by annual leave and it isn’t long enough, even with a bank holiday tagged on the end. Things will change soon. Time will be our own and we’ll be able to just go for it – pandemic, lockdown and personal worries aside.

Back in the good old days when The Moody Blues did a UK tour, we’d be with them, going to places we otherwise wouldn’t go. I suppose that was a form of wanderlust, even though we booked everything in advance and knew exactly where we were going and for how long. We were ‘Travelling Eternity Road’ if you like, including Manchester Apollo, or now I think it is called O2, we would drive home from there; London would be part of a sight-seeing holiday, Birmingham, got to be in their home city, often where the last concert would be, and anywhere else we could factor in. Lots of concerts over many years. It was always worth it.

If I felt ready to mingle with the rest of society, I would have travelled to Wembley, supporting Blackpool F.C. in their successful play-off final against Lincoln City. Instead, I watched on TV at home. Feeling stressed and holding my breath for the most of ninety-odd minutes isn’t healthy. In my house there were shrieks, screams, tears and much applause. The neighbours knew we were home.

I found this, by Alfred Joyce Kilmer:

Roofs
(For Amelia Josephine Burr)

The road is wide and the stars are out
and the breath of the night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet.
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,
And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a human dwelling place.

I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to roam
All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home:
The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day
Will wander only until he finds another place to stay.

A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead;
Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.
He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high,
But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away the sky.

If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along.
And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,
Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes.

They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,
And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.
It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,
But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.

                                                                     Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886 - 1918)

Thanks for reading, take care if you're out there, Pam x