Impressions I

I'm writing this post - the first for many a moon - on a FlyBe flight from Birmingham International Airport to Paris CDG. My iPad 1, once the object of admiration and envy, now warrants no more than disdain or indifference. That's a relief really as I can get on with telling you something about my latest trip to England, now drawing to a close. The purpose of my visit was to see my family: my sister and brother-in-law in Braintree, my son and family at Widdington near Saffron Walden and my brother and family at Ditton Priors, near Bridgenorth in Shropshire. I had a lovely time from start to finish but family matters are not really the focus of this blog; at least not at the moment. Perhaps they should be.

I have written before of the unsettling effect of travelling, in particular of returning to one's home country after a prolonged absence. This time the experience was less disquieting than in the past, partly because my activities with the boating community in Saint Jean de Losne have given me the chance to speak and hear English more often than for many a year. And partly because I have in a sense given up the ghost and treat travelling to England as a more or less seamless experience, punctuated only by the need to change languages somewhere along the way, much as your mobile phone switches operators who are pleased to charge you exorbitant roaming fees.
To be continued