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Of holidays and holiday snaps

Foreign holidays; what are they good for?

Blue skies and pretty buildings




Opening your eyes to things new and different and inspiring that send your head off into an intoxicating spin of words and stories and pictures and magic and light and mystery ... I see these lamps and imagine spirits huddled round them at night to keep warm; spirits that sing so quietly that you almost notice a softly lilting hum and then wonder what it was you were hearing and look away before anyone notices how intently you were studying the lamps and comments on the mad, far-away glint in your eye and wonders if it is something to do with the bottle of red at lunch-time; and spirits that sway as they sing, making the hot air dance and shimmer ...




Seeing strange places and dreaming a people, their culture and history, at a time very different to our own 




Being one of a crowd and experiencing that awkward, shuffling tourist-as-one-of-a-herd discombobulation at sites of special antiquity. And trying to see through the sea of feet and strollers and screaming, bored children all wanting the colourful tatt on display that is probably about as local as a polar bear in Africa, and the smoke and chatter and sweat, with an individual eye; looking for pictures that aren't just copies of thousands of other holiday snaps but catch the spirit of the place ...

... snap 




... slightly better snap ...




... probably not many other snaps of the ground. But think softly falling feet; centuries of softly falling feet that polish and wear the stone and slip past into the past. Gone. Like spirits into the shifting air. A silent touch of life on stone. Till only the stone remains. 




Noticing flowers that are at the same time both familiar and different from those at home






And wondering why so many Europeans still smoke and looking forward to the relatively cleaner air of streets (and pavements) at home 




Also, laughing when it rains




and running wet through emptied streets. 




And looking for the sunlight on newly washed stone.




The foreign holiday; its purpose then? - to experience a different place (buildings, food, smells, language, noise, light) and in doing so open tired eyes, reawaken imagination and spark the awe and wonder that feed the soul. 

Or - in competitively counting the insect bites (Littlest 38) and struggling to sleep in the heat (spritzing water and writing at 02.37am) and gasping at the truly terrible and terrifying local driving - arriving at the end of the holiday with a longing to go home. And a plan for all the things to do when  back at home. A bit like the post-holiday version of New Year's resolutions.

If the plan includes write more; drink less; and stop procrastinating, it will be about as successful as all my resolutions, on all the January firsts, of at least the past ten years. Unless, of course ...







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