May 6th 2014

 

The wanderer returns. I last entered this building on March 27th and so it was with some sense of trepidation and a slight pang of 'well my mini-career break really is over' that I walked into the building today at 7.45am. It's a strange though obvious feeling to know that while I was away everything has just carried on as before. The BBC in Bristol is celebrating 80 years on this site and 2 flags have been erected in my absence. My colleagues have kindly written that it was 17 days until I returned (what happened to days 16-0 I wonder) and the post card I sent from Orkney is pinned up on the notice board. Almost a parallel existence, I've been hither and yon yet the stuff of life which encircles me and reaches its fingers from me to wherever remains in place. That is a lesson I learnt many years ago, my life encircles me not the other way around and so when I move on, life just carries on without me. That happened visiting a house I lived in years before, everything had changed and it was no longer my house, except in my memory, and that taught me to never look back too much, keep moving forward and looking ahead as that way time slows down. The future is a long way off, the past a recent memory.

 

Seeing the postcard was an interesting moment. I remember writing this in a café in Kirkwall and posting it in Dounby where I stayed. It, like me, has travelled the 600 miles to Bristol but not in my hands so as I read it again it was like welcoming an old friend.

 

One wonderful surprise however was this book below. I spend a lot of time in tea shops and cafe's and an ex colleague of mine had left this as a Birthday present, sadly missing me by a day when she delivered it at the end of March. It was a lovely extension to my 50th Birthday to open a present 36 days later as I sat down to read through my 881 e-mails which had arrived in my absence. I may have to visit every one of the 140 tea shops in this book.  And in case you are wondering, of the 881 emails, 7 needed a reply or action, the rest? Well I've been away haven't I so the moment has passed - a salutary lesson I feel.