Getting Away

Getting Away

One of my pleasures in life is to "pop out" for a few hours, or perhaps a day, touring round, seeing the sights, and meeting the people. Usually in our local area, and usually less than 50 miles from home.

I'm not much of a "Christopher Columbus", I like to explore, but have no wish to travel to distant lands. I'm more than happy where I am, I have my life arranged as I want it, which provides contentment, and if you have that there isn't much else you lack.

This wasn't always the case, and I often longed for my annual holiday and the chance to experience life elsewhere. In those days, I remember the suspense building up to the next which holiday, buying "needed" items for a week or two prior to departure, and ecstatic, almost boiling over excitement when departure day dawned.

At the end of such holidays (the first week passing leisurely, the second, seemingly gone in a flash!), I felt sadness, almost depression. The thought of returning to "normality" left me in the "dumps". I remember returning to Tilbury docks once, on the ferry from Sweden, seeing the dockworkers marshalling the ship through the locks, and teeming rain pouring down from a grey sky, and thinking:

"God! What on earth am I doing here, swapping Sweden for this place?".

I used to visit Sweden a lot, I have relatives there, it is, and will always be a favourite destination of mine whenever I decide to travel abroad.

There seemed no comparison then, Sweden being a huge, sparsely populated scenic country of Lake and Forest, with an impressive network of empty high quality roads, a free and easy lifestyle, and a high standard of living. Back here, it was much as ever, too many people with little space, highly industrialised, and everybody seemingly racing to catch up, whilst not always being sure what you are chasing.

I was young then, green, inexperienced, and what reasoning I had wasn't always well considered. It lacked reality, my vivid imagination painted dreams, occasionally of such quality that they perhaps eclipsed reality. The heavy industrialisation of the past has faded over the years, there were forests of cranes at Tilbury docks, and dirty smoking chimneys along the route. All gone, along with all the work that went with them.

These days, I have come to see things generally for what they are. There is usually (perhaps always) a great depth to reality, although I feel it is not always appreciated. We tell the time by staring at the clock face, and although all are aware that there is a mechanism driving the hands, few, I think, appreciate what it is, or how it works.

For some odd reason (or is it that odd?), Nowadays, I always appreciate the mechanism as well as the clock face. I seem to understand what's going on behind, why things interact as they do, the thought behind the design.

I guess what I refer to is experience. You can't teach it, but we all gain it as life passes. Many times lately I find myself wishing that those pulling the levers of power had more experience on which to base their judgement, but I guess they're busy gaining it as they go!

I wonder sometimes if having a greater sense of reality reduces one's imagination? I still have my imagination, and it remains vivid, but is it is as lively as it once was, I wonder? Could it be that getting older and the daily loss of brain cells associated with age has blunted imagination, or perhaps that dosing with reality is an antidote to it?

Unfortunately, I don't have a young me to compare against this old, worn out one, if I did, I might know the answer. Certainly, I don't seem to get the same excitement from things that I once did.

Anyway, having all this vast experience gained over the best part of 60 years (I don't believe it either! No one is that old, and especially not me!), I've come to realise that Great Britain (well, the Olympics have just finished, and the title has been foremost most days recently!) Isn't such a bad place to live at all.

To me, it takes a lot of beating, more beating than other countries have a hope of persuading me otherwise. These days, the thought of going away on holiday almost makes a shudder run down my back at the thought. All those arrangements, working to schedules, allowed extra time (which is then wasted, in the main), What is the point? Where is the fun?

I may well be odd, thinking like that, probably am, but you know what? I don't care.

But now, I'll wind up this blog by returning to my opening line about one of my pleasures being to pop out for a few hours to see what's going on, experience life, meet people etc.

From time to time, I find myself travelling through a village called Rolvenden which is a village that existed in Saxon times, (sometime before the year dot I think). It's a picturesque village sitting on a hill. At the bottom of the hill is Rolvenden station, the main station on the Kent and East Sussex Railway, which stretches from Tenterden in the East, to Bodiam in the West along a river valley.

I'm sure the Rolvenden has many claims to fame, but for me it's sausages.

For many years, approaching it from the South West, I'd pass farmland with signs in the hedge proclaiming; "Free Range Sausages". I was always tempted, and in fact stopped a couple of times to buy some, but free range sausages are shy creatures, and it was rare for them to be caught. I think that the usual method was to lure them into pots, much as you would crabs. I believe they used mashed potato with a bit of gravy as bait!

Seriously though, every time I saw the sign I imagined strings of sausages coiled in the sun, or slithering under the hedgerows, in the manner of snakes. It always brought a wry smile to minutes, and a chuckle!

These days, Rolvenden is home to "Hoad's Corkers" which are proper Kentish sausages in every sense of the word. In my estimation they are never less than equal to any other sausages, and more equal than most. Since I'm invariably dieting, Hoad's Corkers are rarely on my menu nowadays, and I look forward to the rare times when they are.