5th March 2010:

Home, according to the old cliché, is where the heart is.

I was born and grew up in a fairly gritty and industrial part of West Central Scotland where living standards are mixed, poverty is prevalent, ignorance and intolerance are rife and the smart people spread their wings and make a break for it at the earliest opportunity. It’s a shame in many ways. I always come back from visits there with a strange sense of guilt; guilt that I don’t feel more of an emotional attachment to the place where I grew up and roamed as a youngster. In truth, I guess I never really thought I would grow old there. Even then it felt stifling, and I frequently found the attitudes of those around me narrow-minded and blinkered. In retrospect, those people were probably dealing with a set of economic circumstances that didn’t allow them much room for dreams and ambitions, but at the time it just seemed so….small.

Travel broadens the horizons. It shows us that there are different places where people enjoy different lifestyles, different weather and have different priorities. It throws into sharp focus our own parochialism and sense of place. And for that we should be thankful. Those of us who can afford to travel well, anyway. Those who insist on 2 weeks on the Costa del Sol drowning themselves in San Miguel and aloe vera After Sun will probably return no wiser, with only heat stroke and hardened arteries to show for their grand adventure in foreign climes. And for that condition, alas, there may be no cure….