The Trouble With Saying Goodbye to Britain

Countdown to Italy: 16 days!

It is noon, yet the warm British sun hangs a full twenty degrees out of kilter as I stand peering tiptoed over the stone wall that separates me from the town below. The roads that cascade from the top of each surrounding hill unite at a ring road, where remains of a heavy day of construction lie in the form of a few scattered pylons. Far off, I can just make out the billows of smoke coming from an unseen steam train as it toots its way into the Bridgnorth station. It is the last full day I will spend alone with my family before the hectic preparations begin for Italy, and this day of touring a traditionally British town, in the traditionally British countryside after drinking heaps of very traditional British tea has left me feeling prematurely homesick.

I am not usually the type to fall victim to homesickness. Even while I was saying my last farewells in Canada, my mind was turned ever forward to the possibilities which living in England might bring. Perhaps I felt the occasional twinge in Japan, but a douse of sake and good friends were always the cure for that.

What makes leaving England different is that I am leaving a home that I am still in the process of getting to know. In Japan, I had two years to familiarize myself with when the sakura cherry blossoms would bloom, how strong Gunma's karakkaze winds would have to get before they could blow a person into the road, and whether it was typhoon season or not. Canada was like a favourite storybook I knew inside and out. But even with regards to such seemingly small things as the position of the sun in the September sky, Britain is still a bit of an unsolved mystery to me, and I hope that fate will be fair and give me some more leisure time to explore her beauties.