Are We Nearly There Yet?

There is nothing quite as nice as checking your train ticket and packing your bag ready for an adventure. I'm off on my hols this evening, an over night train, breakfast in Glasgow, over the Highlands in a little train, across some water where dolphins might follow the ferry and then onto a bus for what must be one of the most beautiful bus rides anywhere.

On the wall, opposite my desk at work, I have a calendar and I've been gazing wistfully at June, which happens to have a photo of where I'm going. It will be quite strange to have been looking at the idyllic scene at work one day and overnight, to step inside the photo. I wonder if anyone in my office will look hard enough to see me on the horizon, just above Friday, 5th June? I think I might actually be a little bit off the picture to the right, where there's a join in the wallpaper. You might have to catch me as I walk across from the bus stop - I'll wave.

Another calendar in the office has a lovely photograph for July. Somewhere we used to go on family holidays when the children were little - a craggy beach in Cornwall. Flipping through the pages I find myself looking forward into the past. Buckets and spades, damming beaches, body boarding on the waves, cups of tea and pasties on the cliff top in the late afternoon sun, skin tingling from the sea. Dusting sand out from between your toes before getting back in the car and bumping along the field and back onto country lanes.

It won't matter any more if the computer keeps hanging, if the new multi function machine actually does less than the old printer, or whether the drive to greater efficiency is just slowing us all down.

I'll be waiting to see where the calendar on the wall is taking me next.