Epi-blog
Three months seems like such a short time in hindsight. Since getting back I’ve been working in an anonymous office for half that time and it feels like forever, but for anyone who might still be reading this, indeed anyone who might care, in only a few weeks, we will have been home as long as we were away. Quite depressing really, but then what can you do?

So far, only about half of my photographs have been developed and not nearly enough of them are of people. I have – as predicted – far too many shots of volcanoes and sunsets and not enough of the other passengers on the bus and – and this one’s the killer – hardly any of the locals. Next time, I tell myself. Next time.

And there will be a next time. Remember the original plan? When we first went away, we were going to stay away, flying from Santiago to Sidney and staying for a year with a work holiday permit. Financially this proved untenable, so hence we interrupted the momentum with a hiatus back home to raise more funds. So far this isn’t going quite as well as I hoped. See that quagmire labelled taxes, rent and bills? That’s me drowning in it. No, I’m not waving.
Oh alright, maybe I am waving. Gary always accused me of over dramatising these things (although his own account of the bridge jumping episode required some clarification for my terrified parents) so maybe I’ll be waving when the company I work for throw me a rope and pay me. Enough with the dodgy metaphors – not to mention the self-pity. This is supposed to be fun, right?

Hell, it was. It was massive fun. This is perhaps why it seems so curious that it was only three months. Imagine if it had been more! Imagine that! But the sense of stagnation you get while waiting to be on the move again is pretty dispiriting no matter how much of a positive face you try to wear. But then who’s going to sympathise? I’m buggering off again as soon as I can. Pity me, I dare you.

But for the time being, I’m calling it quits for this pile of hastily written, shockingly spelt and punctuated drivel from (mostly) far off lands. In fact I would have written this coda earlier, as indeed I promised I would from Dallas, but the internet facilities there left something to be desired (flimsy terminals on angle-poise brackets, perched on the corners of a handful of seats), actually, most of Dallas airport left something to be desired, the food (a truly horrible BBQ ribs restaurant) the beer (gruesome, watery stuff), the weather, the view, the twelve hours or so that we were supposed to stay there, etc. But at least it was preferable to being chased around that shopping mall by jobs-worth security guards who thought we were spies because we didn’t have a blue rinse and weren’t jogging. The actual journey back was pretty exhausting, thirty-six hours or so jumping from airport-to-plane-to-airport-to-bus. I didn’t sleep; I seem to have lost the knack of sleeping on transport – too afraid now to miss what scenery might pass the window, or to keep myself conscious for another hand of thirteen.

Meanwhile, the work is dull. There’s that routine thing which I’m reluctantly trying to get a handle of, but there are also the photo-albums, increasingly bulging with every visit to Snappy Snaps, and there’s this blog which can still embarrass me with the spelling mistakes and horrible turns of phrase, and – dammit – there are the memories, you’re supposed to keep a stock of those righ? And they get triggered off with anything – it rains here, and it rained so much better in the jungle. I trip over a paving stone here and did it with so much more effect (nay, impact) in Santiago. Then there’s the bulging collection of email addresses in my Hotmail address book, and finally there’s this dull itching in my feet and I promise you that despite the rather stomach-churning nature of some of Gary’s posts, it’s not Athlete’s foot.

This blog will be back in some shape or other, although Gary and I might not be. For a while anyway.

If that makes any sense.
- posted by Vince @ 9:11 AM