2013-09-17 22:54:53.0
So if I'm seriously gonna take you back through my travels, (and I think I am), starting now and moving backwards, then the next big post is going to be from Italy.
But for the sake of completeness, I have to talk about our journey home, or at least the bit of we spent in the UK.
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You can't fly from Sorrento to Heathrow, and you can't fly to Newark from Gatwick - so we had to switch horses in the middle there. It always feels odd visiting the UK - it's not my home any more, but it's hard to feel like a tourist there, especially around London.
When I say it's "not my home", it reminds me of what my Dad used to say when I was a kid.He was born in Wales, but had to leave to get work when he was 16 or 17.
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He spent several years in the Army, then returned to London, where he met and married my mother and where my brother and I were born.
When i was 4 years old, we moved from that then-dreadfully-polluted city. We moved house frequently in those days - by the age of 12 I was at my 5th address. I'm not sure why we moved so often - we didn't get to be consulted.
But every time, every single time that we moved, my Dad would say "Next time we move, we're moving Home". Home, to him, was South Wales. It never seemed to occur to him, that none of the rest of us had ever lived there...
He kept this up all his life, moving just as frequently as ever, "Next time - Home," , right up until he retired for the fourth time (that story may pop up later), and finally, yes finally moved "Home", They've moved just once since then, still in South Wales, and closer to where he was born.
I don't have a "Home" in the same way, and never have. But I can still never really be a tourist in the South East of England.
So there's very little to say about our overnight at Gatwick - we stayed at one of the chain hotels for travellers where you know everything, even the picture that'll be on your wall, before you get there.
The best thing about it was that I got to have bacon for breakfast. Proper bloody bacon, not that nonsense which the USA calls bacon. Bacon with actual meat on, "lean back" bacon. Gorgeous.
How do you US types put up with that fatty pork belly they call bacon here? Really, guys... this is what bacon is supposed to look like...
not that other thing...
- and so until we talk about Sorrento, I'll dream of bacon. Proper bloody bacon.
