Twenty three and a quarter years ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 20 January 2006 14:57:08

I made a bid for freedom.

Having had the misfortune of being born in exile, and forced to live in exile, I finally took my chance to escape, and spent a wonderful 24 hours visiting my home country, all on my own.

I got some strange looks as a school-age lad wandering around since it was not half-term there even though it was at my school. But more than that I found the most incredibly warm welcome from both people and place. My upbringing had led me to believe that it was utterly impossible for someone you passed on the street to smile or say hello if they didn't already know you. Yet here people would smile, talk, laugh, joke, help you out ... all the kinds of things that I now know that humans do, except that they don't in the place where I was born. (It takes an effort of will to convince myself that there, in that hideous place, they are, nevertheless, humans. It's just that there is so little evidence.)

I loved it and it absolutely confirmed, as I knew already, that this was my home, no matter what my birth certificate said. I got to know a different climate, a different tongue, even different money, and a different way of living. And from then on, every holiday or half-term break, I would travel the 400 miles to my homeland. On my own. Free. In love with the feeling of being at home.