The itinerant

Yesterday was my last day at work for a month. Amid the words, kind and envious, of colleagues, I practised smiling instead of gritting my teeth, the better to ignore the noisy voice inside my head that asks, will you get everything done before you go?

Quit frettin’, I say to myself. It’s not as if you’re going to destinations at which there are no supermarkets.

Jessie stopped by these pages to ask “Where are you going to after so much toil?”, a question which, now my itinerary has cohered, I can answer.

From here I pass through Auckland in order to make for Hong Kong, where I have a few days to experience the streets and peaks of the movies I so love. From Hong Kong I’m for the British midlands, spending a day in Birmingham before I try and make my way here on public transport, for this auspicious occasion.

At this slightly out-of-the-way location I’ll be rooming with Ashburton Jay and rubbing shoulders with Deena, her husband Ned and, of course, all our British and American breed friends whom we rarely get to see. Do not be fooled by the genteel publicity materials; the club dinner is preceded by drinks and followed by a disco.

From the midlands I’m for Dundee, indulging myself with rail travel and visiting a friend of the harvestparents who also has a Norwich terrier. I’m looking forward, at the very least, to hearing stories of my folks they haven’t told me, from when they were my age or a little older, and to see a part of the Old Country I haven’t visited before. Having flung myself north, I then bounce back to Bristol, from where Aitch and I will head for Amsterdam, another new destination for me.

After this I head for a few days in London, during which time I intend to disappear into at least both of the Tates, and hopefully more galleries major and minor. Previous visits to London have been highly social, at the expense of more traditional art-loving touristy activities, and have also been based in outlying suburbia, often wherever Mouthwash Man was living at the time. I have lost time for which to make up in this regard, and a central city location from which to foray.

Out of London I head back to Japan, staying in Tokyo for five days, with some work matters to which I’ll attend—seeing my exchange students and their teachers again not least among them—and then to Kyoto for ryokan/temple/shrine experience. My Japanese remains as limited as ever but I’m hoping the smiling and bowing that served me extraordinarily well last year will work again this time. At the very least I hope to increase my character recognition. How I love that country!

And that’s it—a month of tearing around, which is to say, my idea of fun. Plans change, connections get missed and itineraries collapse in on themselves, so I cannot say for certain that these are the exact steps I’ll take. I only hope to find my travelling, solitary self again: the she who stays calm and below the radar, keeps a short stride but takes rapid steps, and whose flashes of insight and ideas do much to fuel writing and research for the sedentary months to come.

Inevitably I will miss the dogs with pangs extreme, and though I have reminders of Señor Mojito in the small stack of books he has loaned me for airline reading (holding me true to my vow to read Harry Potter once the series had concluded) I expect there’ll be some wistful moments to experience there too, since he is much to me.

I don’t know the extent to which I’ll be inclined to write-as-I-go, but will try and keep note of the kind of stuff from which narrative can later be made. (I contend that, contrary to popular opinion, a journal is best fuelled by not much happening.)