This post sort of follows on from the last - read on and you'll see what I mean!!
On the trip she made lifelong friends, and has since travelled to the USA to visit one of them and has also been back to Swaziland to catch up on a baby that a good friend has had. The friend is due to marry at some point and Victoria has already had an invite even though the date hasn’t been set, but she’ll be there if she can – come hook or by crook!! Since her return she has done the Plymouth uni bit, has a degree in Geography (sharing her father’s love of the world, and regularly quoting me about the importance, above everything else of Geography – after all “Geography makes the world go round!), a Master’s in International Relations, the return trip to Swaziland engineered to fit with her dissertation about attitudes to Aids in Africa, with interviews containing some fairly probing questions with government ministers, amongst others, who at best were inclined to be rather blinkered to the issue! Then, she went to teach in China (six months this time and although it gets easier we were glad that there was a regular boyfriend back at home and she didn’t fall in love with an eligible Chinese man, despite falling in love with the country and people in general! There followed a PGCE, (you can see this has been some time in the writing!) and she’s now teaching Geography in Saltash, loving every minute of it, but determined to continue her journeying – she has a world map covered in black dots showing where she has been, it’s a bit like a heavy mist over the map, with recent trips to America (twice), Switzerland, France, Dubai and Iceland – not bad for one so young, she’s five continents down just Australasia and Antarctica to go, and I’m sure she will!!
Hands across the sky
I’m writing this at a time when many parents, the world over, are undergoing similar emotions. It has taken nearly three weeks, but tonight the signs are right; the waxing moon hangs low in the sky, the nightly stroll with the dog has been in shorts and tee shirt the night so balmy that Africa doesn’t seem so far away and the otherwise clear night sky had one strange dark towering cloud that slowly changed shape from a family of upright meerkats, an elephant with rampant trunk, a panting leopard and the majestic rising tail of a large whale or shark ~ all will be revealed.
It all started quite simply, over a year ago, when the almost inevitable happened and Victoria pragmatically announced that after “A” levels she was going travelling, but had already decided to only go for three months, between exams and university and then travel again before starting “work proper!” You may have already realised that Victoria is an organised soul, to the point that she already knows who is going to marry her, not in the sense of spending the rest of their lives together, she doesn’t at the moment have that special person in her life, but rather a family friend who she wants to perform the ceremony – the groom will have to come later!
Quite simply Victoria is determined and soon after making this decision, the quest started as to where to go and what to do. As if by fate shortly afterwards, whilst helping to tidy out some old resources at school, she happened upon a brochure for a company called Teaching and Projects Abroad, who specialise in taking people, of all ages, to many locations the world over to fulfil their dreams (if ever I go missing a good place to start looking for me would be travelling with the Mongolian nomads!!), and quickly she had decided what she was going to do! The £2,500 price tag was never going to be a problem, because in the best sense Victoria gets what she wants!! Within twenty-four hours she had emailed several questions to the firm, which reinforced her initial decision, obtained a second job and worked out how she could met the payment deadlines.
Hard work, a small third job and successful applications for a couple of useful grants, one of which involved a couple of lengthy and chatty telephone conversations with a “Lady” of the realm(!), which culminated in the Lady suggesting that if ever Victoria was “up in town” she should call in for chat and Victoria responding that similarly, if the “Lady” were passing Stroud, she should call in for a cuppa(!), resulted in the money quickly being raised. However, to date the chauffeured limo hasn’t arrived, but maybe on her return, the promised report of her trip might renew the friendship!!
Three weeks in and this was as far as I got (apart from what was to be the last line, but has ended up the next line after this paragraph!), pressure of time or was it emotion (if you haven’t already, you ought to go to that “last” line!), getting the better of me. But, now a number of years later and numerous other trips under her belt and our own adventure into the unknown – Moving to France! – also several years down the line and this needs completing, not only to get it out of the system, but also to hopefully reassure other parents who might experience a similar occurrence. If nothing else, as time has gone by, the world is certainly a smaller place, communication is easier, but there remain pitfalls along the way, but like me she needed to “get it out of her system” only it didn’t quite work like that as it simply rekindled “the travel bug!”
The house certainly seems (seemed) empty, but the world is a fuller place as Victoria has gone out into it; their gain is our loss......
It was hard, and having arrived at Heathrow in good time we were effectively, no in fact ineffectively killing time before the really hard bit of seeing her through the departure gate, the point of no return and the start of her lone adventure. Suddenly she seemed very young, she had only finished her A levels a couple of days before, and also suddenly grown up and flying the nest, not just down the road to “uni” in Plymouth, but almost to the other side of the world and certainly to the other hemisphere. It was a mixture of the young and old that took over here, as Victoria suggested that it would be best if she were to go now through the departure gate, thus not putting off that moment any longer, emotions growing and the big leap beckoning! (Gosh, I think it must have been the emotion getting the better of me, as this is hard to write all these years later and another gap of several weeks has taken place, in which to compose myself!!!)
Then, suddenly she was gone; hugs and kisses, burning eyes, dry throat, enjoy yourself and have fun, and with a quick backward glance, too long might have tipped the balance and she fled through the departure gate, off to Swaziland to work in an school, via South Africa, (Amazingly, this is still difficult!) her very young looking back and pale blue Karrimor grip disappearing quickly round the corner, almost forgetting to show the customs lady her passport! Slightly selfishly I had renewed an old friendship, from university days, at least more than the annual Christmas card / Christmas letter, to ask if he could be an emergency contact should Victoria need help from someone with a friendly face and considerably nearer. It was probably the fact that he has a daughter of a similar age that he came up trumps, not only offering to be a closer contact, but also meeting her in Johannesburg on her return, to put her up for a weekend and look after her extra baggage, while she had some time to do some sight-seeing and was off to Capetown, intent on seeing the penguins, the meeting of the oceans (The South Atlantic one side of the headland and the Indian Ocean on the other), climbing Table Mountain and .... swimming with the great white sharks!!! Unfortunately, although we didn’t really want to know the day she was doing this, by a process of elimination we did, and she snorkelled in the cage and has the video to prove it - I did say she was determined!! All this potentially on her own, other than friends she might meet along the way and as well as being determined, she is also one of life’s collector of friends – all over the world she now has friends who she keeps in touch with and have brought about other travels, but those are another story!
It was tempting to wait and wave the aeroplane off, but with so many comings and goings and little chance of her actually seeing us on the observation platform even if we did wave at the right aircraft and needing the comfort of the enclosed space of the car and the distraction of motorway driving to take our mind off the fact that our youngest was rapidly travelling in the opposite direction and was to be away for three long months – hardly a 3 day school trip when the house had seemed quiet then, what would it be like getting home today. The atmosphere in the car was rather sombre and certainly quieter than on the journey to the airport, as Victoria talks even more when excited or nervous, or in this case both! Probably, to put off the moment of getting home and passing her empty bedroom, we decided to stop off for lunch at a favourite pub restaurant and being a very warm day, we made the mistake of choosing to eat outside – right under the flight path from Heathrow to the US of A, and it seemed that hardly a mouthful passed without the roar of a large jet high above reminding us of our own precious cargo winging rapidly south. At least the planes above were not likely to be Victoria’s and were too high if they had been for her to glimpse us and have last minute / too late qualms!! I can’t remember what the meal was like, our minds and thoughts were on other things!
She ended up having a fantastic time and as I said before with modern technology we were able to keep in touch fairly regularly, even from an internet cafe in Spain when we were on holiday some weeks later. It had been a little while since we had “spoken” to her (Skype wasn’t at this point around, or if it was we hadn’t found it!) and she seemed rather a long way away when we opened the latest email to read “I’m alright, but someone threatened to kill me the other day!” Putting on a braver face than we really felt and only a little reassured by the tone of the rest of the email, we replied to say, rather flippantly, that we were pleased to hear from her and to hear she hadn’t been shot! A couple of days later in the next internet cafe the message started “Oh, it wasn’t a gun, it was a machete!!” I’m not sure if that put our minds at rest much!
On the trip she made lifelong friends, and has since travelled to the USA to visit one of them and has also been back to Swaziland to catch up on a baby that a good friend has had. The friend is due to marry at some point and Victoria has already had an invite even though the date hasn’t been set, but she’ll be there if she can – come hook or by crook!! Since her return she has done the Plymouth uni bit, has a degree in Geography (sharing her father’s love of the world, and regularly quoting me about the importance, above everything else of Geography – after all “Geography makes the world go round!), a Master’s in International Relations, the return trip to Swaziland engineered to fit with her dissertation about attitudes to Aids in Africa, with interviews containing some fairly probing questions with government ministers, amongst others, who at best were inclined to be rather blinkered to the issue! Then, she went to teach in China (six months this time and although it gets easier we were glad that there was a regular boyfriend back at home and she didn’t fall in love with an eligible Chinese man, despite falling in love with the country and people in general! There followed a PGCE, (you can see this has been some time in the writing!) and she’s now teaching Geography in Saltash, loving every minute of it, but determined to continue her journeying – she has a world map covered in black dots showing where she has been, it’s a bit like a heavy mist over the map, with recent trips to America (twice), Switzerland, France, Dubai and Iceland – not bad for one so young, she’s five continents down just Australasia and Antarctica to go, and I’m sure she will!!
As a family we had family holidays in Europe, touring with a tent or a caravan, regularly visited the Isles of Scilly and travelled widely in the UK, but I think her real mentor and role model, the person responsible for us having a few sleepless nights and heart stopping moments is undoubtedly her secondary school Headteacher – Viv or Guruji (great leader of people, wise one, revered teacher etc. etc.) to some, including myself, who have been privileged to travel with her! At 13 Victoria (and her Mum) went with Viv on an Indian journey, had her 14th birthday at the Taj Mahal went a young girl came back a changed thoughtful and determined young women – India has that affect on you.
On her South Africa / Swaziland post “A” level adventure she left a thoughtful and determined young woman and returned a confident seasoned traveller even more determined to travel the world and see its wonders. It is hard when they first make that decision to travel, at her age I couldn’t have done what she has, although, I’ve come to “gap year” much later in life, moving to live in France! I’m also aware that in not every instance is there a happy ending and tragedies do happen, and perhaps that is another reason that writing this has taken so long and been so difficult. Indeed during the intervening years between start and finish of this piece, the friend of one of our very good friend’s son, was tragically killed in a motorbike accident when travelling in the Far East and such stories are truly heart wrenching, but can’t and shouldn’t stop our young people from going far out into the world and making their mark if they so wish. Hard as it might be, and certainly despite the emotions involved, we should let them go, even encourage them, and give them our blessing particularly as now with Skype you can almost travel with them - occasionally – we were able to “walk” around Victoria’s interesting flat in China, and meet her flat mate, once she’d got properly dressed as it was very warm and the air con wasn’t very efficient!
(Phew made it, despite a few wobbles along the way! But, on re-reading I realise two things; first perhaps I shouldn’t leave it here and second, which in turn addresses the first!, I should perhaps explain the title - Hands across the sky.)
Shortly before Victoria’s departure, as an avid watcher of the moon and loving nothing better than a walk late at night by the light of the full moon, I tuned in to a TV programme about the moon. A fascinating programme it was and suddenly, despite years of joking with Victoria and our son Daniel about how people “down under” are walking about upside-down, it had never occurred to me that the moon in the southern hemisphere is also “upside-down!,” and it also reminded me that far away as she would be, she would be able to see the same moon at almost the same time as me, the time difference being only an hour. So then, and now whenever she is away, we “hold hands through the moon!” the only proviso being that if she’s in the southern hemisphere to be sure we’re looking at the same thing, one of us has to view the moon by looking at it between our legs, or if feeling agile, standing on our head!!!
By one of life’s amazing coincidences, the Irish folk programme I’m listening to as I write this, which will explain any spelling mistakes as you’ve not got my full attention!, has just played a song called “The moon behind the hill” with one line that goes – “No one takes notice of the moon at night” - We beg to differ, and there have been times when our hand holding has been shared with friends on either hand, with pictures (thanks to photo phones) showing the people at the other end that we’re really and truly peering out at the moon between our legs, perhaps I should write a song called “The moon between our legs!” it could become an international song of peace and friendship across the world! (That’s a better ending!!)
Roger Higgs
finally put to bed in April 2012, just as our next generation of young
people are looking forward to their forthcoming adventures
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