A long lost letter.

Dear Ether,

In my head Europe was going to be filled with intermissions for blog writing in sleepy little cafes off town sqaures. But of course Europe wasn’t how it was in my head at all, and there certainly wasn’t any time for sleepy blog writing. It was however, amazing and everything I wanted it to be – an unforgettable experience I will carry with me forever in the tiny diary with hundreds of pages scribbled on trains and yet more photos taken in both sun and rain.

And I think that goes some way to explaining why this blog post comes so late. Denial that it was to ever end: Me and L wrote a diary every single day, yet there is a space in both our diaries on the day we arrived home where the last entry was supposed to be written…

I am eventually coming to terms with the fact that I am no longer an inter-railer, traveller, camper, survivalist, or any of the other terms I liked to refer to myself as whilst in Europe, if only because I have to start writing again at some point before I end up leaving the country again…

FEAR.

Anyway: rather than merely failing to talk about Europe at all, I’m going to attempt a photo+summary of each place we visited on the trip:

DEPARTURE:

I think this photo nicely captures how ‘apprehensive’ (read: shit scared) we were about our adventure. I wish I could tell us not to worry.

PARIS:

It’s Artemis our trusty tent! On his debut pitch, which was made v. difficult by exhaustion + ground made of PURE ROCK. Paris was huge and overwhelming – we spent our time beating the streets seeing as much as we could with our precious little time. We saw a lot, and walked further.

AVIGNON:

Avignon was similarly beautiful, but strikingly different in its rural, fortified beauty. Also, our arrival coincided with a theatre and music festival which meant the streets were bustling with performers and actors. Wonderful atmosphere and constantly entertatining.

VENTIMIGLIA:

An unplanned stop which yielded beauty, fun AND pizza in equal measures. We loved it here.

FLORENCE:

Shockingly beautiful at every turn and every view, Florence really captured me. Also, good fun playing cards against some dutch girls late into the night…

PISA:

Another unplanned stop, this time just a one-nighter to see the tower (which was magnificent) before training off to:

ROME:

having been asked the question, ‘where was your favourite place?’ a few times by more curious friends and family – my honest answer has to be Rome. It is a deservedly famous place for its historic beauty encompassing two thousand plus years…

LAKE GARDA:

It’s incredibly beautiful and was a great mid-trip break from being real ‘travellers’. Instead we turned into tourists for a couple of nights and just lay in the sun; eating ice cream and swimming in the clear waters. Blissssss.

VENICE:

Venice is unique, beautiful, but not a great place to be in the rain. After getting fed up of the non-stop downpour we went to a restaurant instead. Take THAT weather!

VIENNA:

I know, a strange picture. But it gets in a lot about Vienna: it’s full of museums for one, but is also a striking mixture of new and old architecture, both striking in their own rights.

BRATISLAVA:

Yet ANOTHER unplanned stop, but similarly rewarding. Fantastic lakeside campsite (super cheap!), beautiful old town and we only got flooded once…

PRAGUE:

Another shot of camping life. I loved Prague, a city of incredible beauty and great beer!

BERLIN:

By now we were on a two night schedule, which didn’t feel enough time to do justice to a city as rich as Berlin. Yet as can be seen I continued to find the time to make new friends…

AMSTERDAM:

Amsterdam was another city of seemingly incompatible opposites: cathedrals next to red light districts? A city with a campsite on a small island on its outskirts? It was a much loved stop and another place I’d love to see again.

PARIS:

I know! We’ve already been here! But our circular route inevitably led us back to where we began. So once again we marched the streets of Paris, this time with the pavements of a dozen other cities already trampled under our feet.

I have never travelled before but now will certainly travel again: Just as our frantic dash around the continent did not do it justice, nor does this quick summary do our trip justice…

All that remains is to say a la prochaine, Europe.

Diving Board.

Dear Ether,

At three 'o clock tomorrow morning I will start my journey to mainland Europe.

I already feel as though I'm very far away from home down here in Portishead, or 'Posset' as it is affectionately referred to as by the locals. There is the tang of salt water blown over by wind which takes you back to English holidays as a child. There are strange views of waters illuminated by distant lights which could be of anywhere in the world.

However, it is the half-packed rucksack which already weighs roughly the same as me and the endless lists of things to remember which insist most forcefully that I am not quite there yet. That first day of holiday feeling, stood at the edge of a pool and trying to muster the courage to jump in. You know the water will be lovely, but lapping at your feet it looks cold and foreboding.

Next post from the deep end.

vegetation annihilation.

WRITING A POST ABOUT IT WASN’T AN INVITATION FOR YOU TO HACK DOWN MY CLOVER PATCH YOU HATEFUL FARMERS.

AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE THE GROWTH OF PLANTS AND SUCHALIKE?

Even the utopian prospect of Europe is shadowed by money worries and by the impossibility of leaving Paris by anything but the most expensive train in the world ever.

I shouldn’t complain.


If you voted Tory I hope they fuck you over harder as reward.

Clover Lover.

Dear Ether,

Our house verges on what we affectionately refer to as ‘the wasteland’. A dramatic name for what is essentially an overgrown bit of grass where a garden was supposed to be. The farm who owns it ran out of money attempting to build a house next to ours.

However, the wasteland was once a treasured land to me. It was the site of many a ‘bug collecting expedition’ and even a favoured hiding place of my old cat. It’s real value though lay in an scraggly clover patch in one corner.

This patch is a place where I spent many hours scouring the ground, pouring over each clover, as I knew that hidden therein  were four leafed clovers. I have no memory of first finding a four leafed clover there, but the constant, if elusive, presence of four leaf clovers in that patch was something as certain to me as the order of numbers or the infallibility of parents. Still our house’s encyclopaedias and dictionaries are filled with four leaf clovers pressed between tissue and pages years ago.

Since then four leafed clovers have become a recurring motif in my life: Taking a six leafed clover into show and tell in primary school earned the strange boy from Singapore an even more mysterious air.

At secondary school I defended my detention free record by any lengths of swat-ery imaginable. However, on one fateful morning I found I had forgotten my French exercise book. An oversight that was punished unfailingly and unflinchingly, with a detention. I still remember being stood outside of the classroom with my friends smirking at the prospect of me on the verge of losing my detention free record. In front of them, I removed a four leaf clover from my wallet and asked it for the luck for the teacher to be ill (for supply teachers would not know to check). Inevitably, a supply teacher rounded the corner and I was spared. The look of disbelief on my friends’ faces as I escaped from this certain doom is still with me today.

More recently, a farmer took to the wasteland zealously with a strimmer and decimated the entire clover patch. I was upset, but was leaving for University and felt it was the ending of the clover era.

Last year, On walking with L through the countryside, I happened upon another four leaf clover which she now keeps in her purse and which accompanies her to exams. It was a bitter-sweet find as it reminded me that my clover patch was no more.

This morning however I passed the wasteland on my way to mow the lawn. At only a cursive glance I saw that the clover patch had grown back where it once had. On closer inspection I found that somehow, after all these years, and even after being mown down, that precious patch was still growing its four leafed clovers, now left unpicked and unseen by the world.

Long live its four leafed legacy.

A la prochaine.

On a distant prospect.

Dear Ether,

The last Liverpudlian sunset I’ll bear witness to for a long time.

The prospect of things to come.

Go-faster thoughts.

Dear Ether,

My Dad driving us through the rain-splattered night, discussing culture and literature to the radio’s insistent slow-drumming beat is about as good as it gets.

I like to run at night and watch the lamp posts blur into go faster stripes, urging me onwards.

The smell and tension of rain yet to fall on parched concrete brings cities back to nature and heads back to senses.

Falling asleep on a train is the biggest thrill a commuter can possibly take: on awaking you could literally be ANYWHERE (on that line).

Emotive writing is both weak and superficial. All else is mundane.

Lines written: #1

we drank so much the stars
crossed before our eyes
whispered sweet-nothings
and disappeared

we woke to traffic
criss-crossing the sky
blaring monotones
and insisted

we rise and face
the crusted mid-day
nagging sensibility
and waited

we hid so the dusk
kissed our conscience
soothing sins
and repeated.