Going Home

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up very early, and I'm going to catch a train Oop North.

I'm going home for a couple of day. If all goes well, soon I'll be moving up there for good.

I say 'home' - well I left there when I was a baby and only returned for occasional visits to grandparents for the next twenty years. After that I had no grandparents left, so in thirty years I've been back no more times than I could count on the fingers of one hand.

I always felt a bit shame-faced about my home town of Barrow-in-Furness. It never sounded very prepossessing. But somehow one's opinion mellows when you recollect that here's a town on the end of a remote peninula, blessed with one of the longest, flattest and safest beaches you'd find anywhere, overlooked by the Lakeland mountains, it starts to sound attractive. A lot like the west of Ireland, in fact, without the tourists. And housing is still cheap!

I suppose it's an acknowledgement that I'm winding down to retirement, but I'm really looking forward to it now. Like a new adventure, and a new beginning full of opportunity.

Wish me bon voyage!