Posted by Andy Bell
I am currently planning a trip.
A biggy.
My first journey to the mother country in at least a decade and a half with stops on the way back to the US and NZ.
Frankly, after putting some kind of schedule together that meets my demands, my family’s needs and my friend’s desires, not to mention the EPL’s fixture list (Go Swans) I am supremely knackered.
It’s a complex jigsaw of airlines, trains and jet-lag compensation.
But.
But, but, but it is an exciting thing to be sure.
There are old places to go, memories to be jogged and, most importantly, splendid people to be embraced.
I fancy it will make me realise for once and for all that the place where I was brought up is not the place that I now belong to.
We migrants/blow-ins often struggle to know exactly where we sit in the order of things.
It’s a challenge & a half.
I feel at a great disadvantage sometimes by dint of the fact that I spent not a single minute in Australia as a child.
So much of what makes my friends in Melbourne & elsewhere what they are is deeply rooted in the Australian childhood experience, particularly for my cohort of late Baby Boomers.
The beach, the bush, the Holden and “there’s cricket on the radio”.
Can’t change the things you can’t change.
But when I return “up north” in September I expect to have my Australian-ness confirmed.
I have lived here two-thirds of my adult life, if you count 18 as the start of adulthood.
So, in language, outlook & much else I will appear to those people to be visited in the UK as familiar, but different.
But these are things that should not be over thought or analysed or blogged about.
Truth is, good people are good people wherever they are.
