"I'm leaving on a jet plane"
I remember listening to this song by Peter, Paul and Mary in the summer of 1970. It was in a coffee bar near the lanes in Brighton. With me was my newly minted American girl friend and she was very soon to go back home to New York and the Bronx.
She went back and we exchanged heart wrenching letters ( I've never written so many letters before or since). I was in stasis - I could do nothing until she returned. (It was that total lack of initiative that did it for our relationship).
We got engaged by correspondence - blue flimsy air mail letters - the engagement was announced in the New York Times. I don't remember putting any announcement in an equivalent paper here. She arrived in the winter of 1970 swearing that we'd never be parted for so long ever again. Within 2 months I'd moved out of our flat in Gospel Oak into a bedsit in Hampstead Village. Now that seems ridiculous: a cheap rented flat in NW3!
So why these remembrances. Here I am at Gatwick flying off to an Arctic adventure in Bergen and it's nearly 50 years since my trans Atlantic romance. For me travel stirs up all those insecurities I've experienced. Travel is so transient, and there are so many connections to get right. Psychologically I just don't believe it possible to link everything up. It works of course otherwise life would be totally messed up. Yet for me every connection has the prospect for disaster. Delays, missed connections, the wrong ticket, somehow I take the wrong train or plane.
Well here I am and soon I'll be on a plane to Bergen - I'll got to find the shuttle to Hurtigruten's terminal and then find the boat and my cabin and then the people I'm on the tour with!
Wish me luck
She went back and we exchanged heart wrenching letters ( I've never written so many letters before or since). I was in stasis - I could do nothing until she returned. (It was that total lack of initiative that did it for our relationship).
We got engaged by correspondence - blue flimsy air mail letters - the engagement was announced in the New York Times. I don't remember putting any announcement in an equivalent paper here. She arrived in the winter of 1970 swearing that we'd never be parted for so long ever again. Within 2 months I'd moved out of our flat in Gospel Oak into a bedsit in Hampstead Village. Now that seems ridiculous: a cheap rented flat in NW3!
So why these remembrances. Here I am at Gatwick flying off to an Arctic adventure in Bergen and it's nearly 50 years since my trans Atlantic romance. For me travel stirs up all those insecurities I've experienced. Travel is so transient, and there are so many connections to get right. Psychologically I just don't believe it possible to link everything up. It works of course otherwise life would be totally messed up. Yet for me every connection has the prospect for disaster. Delays, missed connections, the wrong ticket, somehow I take the wrong train or plane.
Well here I am and soon I'll be on a plane to Bergen - I'll got to find the shuttle to Hurtigruten's terminal and then find the boat and my cabin and then the people I'm on the tour with!
Wish me luck
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