Galavanting

Every once in a while it must be nice, surely, to have a weekend at home?

I'm on the train to London for the weekend. I was in Brighton last weekend. Next weekend I am at home but have a friend visiting. Over the next couple of months I have weekends in Manchester, Weston in Staffordshire, Rotterdam, and both Brighton and London again. And this is without a proper holiday.

I enjoy it. I get around I spend more of my winter weekends at home, so need to enjoy as much of the summer as possible. I love getting away as well, I enjoy seeing different places and although I don't very often take proper holidays, each weekend away feels like a holiday; gives me something to look forward to. And it keeps the trains running I suppose.

I have already waxed about my love of London, and will in due course about Brighton. And I have already regailed you with my weekday routines which enable me to galavante around at weekends with little recourse. Any opportunity I get I course the nation on a journey of some sort to investigate some new place or rekindle some old love.

If I were to go away with less quantity, reduced frequency, it would have to be with greater quality: full weeks at any one time, destinations further, more exotic. Currently I am prevented from experiencing these purely on the basis of the frequency of my mini-jaunts. Whilst they are mini, and relatively localised to Britain; they are most certainly not free. Indeed, to maximise the benefit I feel I have to enjoy these weekend, I have to commit time, energy and expense to them, diverting those same qualities away from extended breaks.

I always feel I can rest when I die. I actually think about resting during the week, but that never happens because of the displacement - or rather concentration - of my routine. But I have now finally conditioned myself to little sleep and rest. Well, except when I turn lazy.

But the expense is not inconsiderate, certainly. In a bizarre contradiction that only I could hold, I manage to convince myself that the trips are few, infrequent, and my equivalent of a holiday and therefore I can enjoy myself with gaye abandon. But, obviously, they are frequent and therefore costly. And the financial burden amounts and depletes any potential holiday funds. A self-fulfilling contradiction.

But it does get me to meet people. Since the end of university my friends have scattered across the nation It gives me the perfect excuse - no, reason - to trek around the far flung regions of the nation to see them again. And annually simply will not suffice. It must be at a minimum frequency of twice a year. No, quarterly. And then the are the regulars, certain annual events to which i have to go; camping trips, music festivals, birthdays, occasions we have just found to regularly drink or any other frippery. Do you know what, I have managed to establish an annual routine. But even on these regular, frequent trips I still manage to find new things to do, new people to meet, something of unbridled fantasy. And that is why. Becuase although the places may be the same, some of the people the same, they are still phenomenal, unique, mine.

And anyway, I can always sleep on the train.