Returning To Old Haunts

Returning To Old Haunts

Returning to old haunts is said to be a guaranteed disappointment, and I am wondering whether that’s true… hoping that it is not.

At least, not necessarily so…

However, instinct tells me that the saying is true… Depending on how long the gap between the visits is, I suppose.

I studied in Portsmouth in my early twenties and returned in my forties. Many buildings that had meant something to me were still there, but the atmosphere was different.

Disappointingly so… but what else should I have expected? The Wiltshire Lamb, for example, where I had worked between classes, was not full of my contemporaries – we didn’t have the same worries… the social concerns were not the same… Money is a universal, collective concern, so I mean the other things except for that.

I lived in The Netherlands, Den Bosch, for nine years, thirty-five years ago, and would love to go back, but… Would it disappoint?

I suppose there is only one way to find out…

Or is it better to go to pastures new and get more good memories and leave Den Bosch in my head as a good memory of thirty-five years ago?

And so we get to tbe point of this self-indulgence, I will have to return to the UK with my wife of fifteen years this year because of Brexit.

If we don’t go back this year, 2018, the chances are that my Asian wife will only be allowed in for a holiday. I have no idea how any government considers this acceptable, but who am I?

And then, when we get back to my home town – my wife would not consider living anywhere else since family is everything to her – it will not be the same… for me.

It can’t be. I left it fifteen years ago… friends will have died, pubs and restaurants will have closed. Hopefully, new places will have opened, but it will be like returning to an old holiday resort where I once had a good time…

It’s scary, but our only option and I am wary of returning to old haunts.

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