Nineteen Years

When I was nineteen years old, I slung a backpack over my shoulder and headed to Europe for six months. I spent the first eight weeks or so traveling around the UK. I started off in London, then headed south-west to the end of Cornwall, before veering back north all the way to the highlands of Scotland, before turning back south passing through York on my way to Dover and on to the continent.

This trip was a turning point in my life both as a “coming of age” for me and also as a time when stories started pecking in my head with a little more intensity. Hiking the lonely Dartmoor, gazing on ancient Stonehenge, walking through castle ruins, and looking up inside cathedrals will do that to you.

Now, nineteen years later, I find myself back in London for a few weeks. It’s sobering, in away, since a “lifetime” has passed since that first trip (I’ve been back a few times since then). Yesterday, I walked around some familiar streets, threw down a few very missed pints, and enjoyed the fact that little has changed. My lower back just hurts more now.

Old? No, I’m not saying I’m that. Making such a claim at (almost) thirty-eight leaves you no where to go in the next nineteen years.

It’s just that I’m amazed how fast time has passed by. In the last nineteen years, I’ve gone to college, lived abroad in both Europe and South America, fell in love and gotten married, had two kids, and worked. Oh, and yeah, I’ve finally finished a book (Nearly done with revisions).

That’s a lot, no? What’s going to happen in the next nineteen years? My boys will be twenty-three and twenty-one, I’ll still be wondering why my wife married me, I’ll hopefully have a career doing this writing thing, and I’ll definitely have another passport full of stamps. Everything else is a mystery that I’ll find out along the way.

I just hope it doesn’t pass me by as fast.

(Fat chance, I know)

Well, I’m off to The City. I want to explore the portion of London that was originally confined within the medieval walls. Yes, I know both the Battle of Britain and the fire of 1666 obliterated much of old London, but I still want to visit the areas that are/were city gates and walk across the city. I’m not currently planning a book set in Medieval or Renaissance London, but who knows what my muse will drop in my lap in the future. I might as well feel how long it take to walk from one end to the other.