Another cold winter in Scotland and retirement is almost upon me.
I tried it once before but circumstances outwith my control forced me to get back on to the hamster wheel. However there is nothing quite like having a pointless job to sharpen the desire to leave it. Finally after 5 long years of mind numbing trivia crushing my soul I can finally get off the hamster wheel for good and find something useful or worthwhile to do with the rest of my life.
As I am preparing to depart this country on what could loosely be described as some kind of disorganised adventure, probably never to return, my thoughts are somewhat mixed but surprisingly free of conflict. As the finish line draws ever nearer I had anticipated feeling a twinge or two of uncertainty about my decision to leave the country but, surprisingly I have no such concerns.
Reflecting on my life in Scotland I have realised that the country that has been my home since the day I was born some 50 odd years ago has morphed in to a place that not only do I struggle to recognise socially, but in which I find myself less and less at home in. I will undoubtedly miss some of my favourite people and places but truth be told, I shall be glad when my bike hurtles Southward on the motorway and over the border in to England.
I shall also not miss the cold and wet weather and I intend to avoid it whenever I am able to.
Not that I am saying that England’s green and pleasant pastures are any more appealing to me because they not, that country is much like Scotland in nature and to me it is merely a conduit that I must traverse to escape this slowly sinking ship of a homeland. What lies in front of me when I finally do cross the English channel for hopefully the last time I do not know, but this particular rat can’t wait to abandon the sinking ship that my country has become to find out what the rest of the world is like!
I have never before attempted to distil my thoughts in such a fashion as this so I do not know how it will all turn out. If I had been asked 10 years ago what I thought of blogging I would probably have said that it was a pointless endeavour which was the preserve of middle class university drop-outs who found themselves to be unemployable in the real world. Yet here I am doing something that I never thought I would…
So in finishing off my first post I suppose I will have to choose a direction for this blog. Will it be about my journey through different countries or my journey through the rest of my life? Or maybe a bit of both, who knows!
A big thanks to my good friend JM for supplying the inspiration for the title of this blog.