Sick of Home # 2

I just wanted to add to Annie's point about being sick of home. Ever since I was a child I have wanted to travel. I would often sit at home and imagine the places I could be at that moment in time, which left me frustrated. I felt like there was a whole world to explore but I was stuck in 'boring old Wetherby'. I began longing to be anywhere but home.

On my gap year I travelled around India and Sri Lanka which was amazing, every day I would visit somewhere new, see beautiful sights, experience new things, not to mention a whole new culture and I never imagined I would miss home. And I didn’t until a few months into travelling when I started to miss the weirdest things ... bacon sandwiches ... dressing gowns ... baths ... being able to walk down the street without being stared at (!) ...

However I never really expected to miss my family. That might sound harsh but I guess I just thought that they would still be there when I got back and I didn’t want to spend all of my time out there getting upset about being so far from home. And every time I called home everything sounded exactly the same, nothing much had happened at work and the cats still missed me ... But anyway what I'm trying to say is that for me it was the creature comforts that drove me to come home (and go straight for the frying pan).

Also a little thought about for our piece, I too like the idea of liminal spaces. However I then began to think about the spaces that you travel through, and about Airport. When I was in Waterloo Station on Saturday I was thinking about all the people around me. I love the atmosphere in train stations, how they are always full of people but never properly inhabited, and how everybody is going somewhere. Also I often think about who those people are, whether they have travelled this way to work for the past 25yrs or whether this is the first time they have stepped off the train here and how this affects the space. Does anybody have any similar thoughts?

Rachael Smith