Pining For The Fjords

Its incredible how nowadays, I live for vacations. Its not that my life is so bad, I have a family I am proud of, I have a job that keeps me off the street. I have plenty to do with my life, I can read, enjoy music, make stuff and walk around a lot. So why is it that I seem to have to focus on the times when I leave it all behind and go elsewhere. In just two weeks, hopefully, the blackwifeo and I will be at Otterburn Hall in the Northumberland National park, which hopefully is just as cool as it looks on the web. Four days there and then we motor down to Staffordshire, to Barton-under-Needwood, for a week with blackbrotherandsisterinlawo on our narrowboat, Prospero. The names alone, Otterburn Hall, Barton-under-Needwood, Prospero sound so magical, that I am afraid the vacation will not live up to my expectations.

Once upon a time, we used to move every few years or so, but with kids come roots. From the time I left South Africa in the late seventies, till we moved here, I never lived more than three years in any house, and was proud of the fact that in the ten years before we got married I lived in eleven houses. The move to Texas (where the two blackchildreno were born), California and even moving back to Israel were exciting. New and new old friends made each of these moves worthwhile. We have been in this same house now for eight years, and I've driven the same route to the same parking lot in the same building for eight years. The job changes occasionally and remains challenging, but the surroundings have not. Of course, watching the kids grow into fiery teens has been monumental. Still I cannot help dreaming of somewhere new.

That why I need these vacations. I need to smell different smells, to wake up to different light, to taste new and old, nostalgic tastes. Anywhere that is not-Israel will do. Once there, I capture "screens" in my memory and replay them over and over when necessary. I remember driving around Loch Ness in the dusk, with the kids in the back, stopping every two mintes so blackwifeo could photograph the unbelievable light. Or the hot chocolate in Bevangne, where the black dressed lady behind the counter explained in sign language that they had just caught Saddam Hussein. The dolphins swimming just off the bow of the catamaran in Kauai, the freezing sea smell at Tintagel, the drive from Edradour through Pilochry, the Birks of Aberfeldy. Enough fool!! There are only two weeks to go.