Don’t look back in anger

I remember someone once saying to me ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way’.  Thinking about it, it was probably a ‘motivational’ poster on LinkedIn.  It is something that has stuck in my mind none the less.  No matter what decisions you make, assuming that you make them with the best of intentions, at least you got to the wrong place for the right reason.

My teenage daughter was at an event in Manchester earlier this week, a city where I worked for just over a year back in 2014 to 2015 and, for those of you that are not parents, that means that I had a trip to Manchester too.  I spent an hour walking around the city centre, retracing my steps and looking up some of my old haunts.

I remember chatting with the guys in the office down there a few times about what I thought of Manchester compared to Newcastle.  My response was always the same, ‘Manchester will be nice when it’s finished’.

Well, I was very pleased to see that in the four years since my last trip, it seems to have been finished off quite nicely thank you very much.  I was always quite shocked by the number of homeless people in Manchester, it was always very noticeable compared to Newcastle City centre and that didn’t appear to be any different.  What was new was the tram lines running up the Main Street past the Arndale centre.  The Northern Quarter was still so hip that that whole part of town should be perched on a penny farthing and sport a waxed moustache.

In a round about way, and linking back to my motivational quote, I guess what I am trying to say it that you shouldn’t look back too often, but it can be a good idea every now and then to stop and reflect.  If you don’t know where you came from, you can’t tell how far you have come.  Every week I would get off the bone shaking trans pennine express and walk to the office and it felt like nothing was changing, no progress was being made, but it was, slowly but surely.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a travel blog so let me bring it back on point.  In just over a week we will be heading over to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island.  Accommodation, travel and hire cars are all booked, we have a list of things we would like to take in while we are there and we have got to the nitty gritty stages or working out which travel adapters we need to buy and which pants we will be most comfortable travelling in.  The excitement is building and I cant wait to get moving again.

Travel is the ‘hot-chocolate-and-a-warm-blanket-in-front-of-a-fire-on-a-cold-day’ to my soul.  The number of days I have had to fight the urge to just jump in a car or a plane and get away from everything are too many to count.  When I get the chance to be on the other side of this piece of rock flying through space, I will grab it and I will wring every second of enjoyment out of it.  I hope Australia is ready for me, I am ready for it!