I bought the backpack with the carte cadeau which was the leaving present from my old work in the UK, so it is as if I carry their good wishes with me always. Well something like that anyway. What I'm getting round to is that baggage goes with you.
People often talk of moving abroad to start a new life, or something like that. But this isn't a list in a Word document, and you can't choose to restart the numbering where you wish. We are all gypsies in that wherever we end up, we unpack all our good and bad crap and set up camp. Whatever you were really rubbish at back home, you'll be really rubbish at here. Similarly whatever you excelled in, carry on excelling here. Or there.
Long, long before Brussels was definite, I had this image. It was me, somewhere foreign, good haircut, rather fine pair of boots, taking a measured Sunday stroll then dropping in at a neighbourhood bar to drink some sort of pale aperitif. Slightly portly gentlemen looked past their wives at me. After a while the fine boots would take me back to an elegant apartment where some beef slow-cooked itself among chestnuts and beer. Perhaps a new twinkly friend would come round to share it.
It is good to keep images like this as reference, although we all know Sundays are more likely about going down the bottle bank and rushing to Carrefour before it shuts. Catching up on the X Factor, messing about on the internet and not sewing up the hem of my trousers.
I really should at least go to Gent for the day. Without the backpack.
Glad you are still here.
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