Never to return
Learning to accept that I may never return to some of my favourite places in the world.
I didn’t leave my native UK until I was 17-years old. And maybe that’s why I have spent the last 40+ years making up for lost time.
Fortunately, my job has allowed me to travel for and wide. I have ticked off great swathes of Europe; visited the US more times than I can actually remember; popped in and out of Africa several times; and I made it to Japan once back in 2019.
Over the course of those travels, I have developed a great affection for many cities, and have revisited some time and time again: Venice, Siena, Verona and Bergamo in Italy; Munich and Hamburg in Germany; Las Vegas and New York (although for very different reasons) in the US; Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Prague and Stockholm; Zurich, Geneva and Vienna.
Travel has informed every aspect of my life; it has expanded my mind and my world view. It has introduced me to people that I will remember forever. And it has allowed me to enjoy food, drink and lifestyles that were once entirely alien to me but after which I now hanker and to which I now aspire.
But I am a man of a certain age. And just as I have accepted that I will never play in midfield for my beloved West Ham United nor be carried away by a lustful Jamie Lee Curtis, I now need to accept that there will come a time when I will be unable to spend time in some of my favourite places.
There will come a time when I will no longer be able to take lunch at Les Quinze Nuits at Plaza Real, just off Las Ramblas in Barcelona or eat “Casonsèi fatti a mano al burro e Formai de Mut” at Ristorante Baretto di San Vigilio in the hills high above Bergamo. There will come a time when I will enjoy my last aqua e menta on the Piazza Erbe in Verona. One day I will swallow my last ever bite of a reuben sandwich at Katz’s Deli in New York.
There was a time in my life when I saw friends and family members for the final time, even though we weren’t aware of that at the time. There was a time when I played football or rode my bicycle with my childhood friends for the last time, even though none of us were aware this was the case. Had I known, I would have taken more time to savour those precious moments; to drink them in; to cling on just a little longer.
So that is how I now view travel. I wander streets looking at buildings; I watch people while drinking coffee; I strike up conversations with people I have never previously met and whom I will probably never see again. And I do so because I know that one of these visits might just be my last.
