What to do, by way of record, on a major overseas trip?

There are predictable options like Facebook, or Instagram (which I’ve never used, and won’t now either); but as a writer at heart, and with significant experience using WordPress in the past, a blog is surely the best bet.

So welcome to my travelog: a chronicle of the month that is my Return To Britain 2022, 14 years after I last set foot on British soil: a delay that will not be repeated once I return to Australia in late September.

Why am I here, based initially in the splendid London suburb of Chiswick?

Overwhelmingly, of course, this is a holiday: the first holiday I’ve had since my last visit to Britain in 2008, also a month-long sojourn in the UK; so much has happened in that time — the arrival of children, a failed business enterprise, a change of industry professionally, a marital break-up, the shifting of personal goals, a pandemic that added extra years to my delay in coming back to the United Kingdom — and the break is both long overdue and (if I may say so) hard earned.

But there are things to do, alongside the usual tacky tourist-y things like visiting iconic attractions, or joining the throng outside the gates to Downing Street (which I did yesterday) in the hope of catching sight of some action.

There are old friends and business associates to catch up with, which I’m doing during my week in London, and it’s great to see their familiar faces again for the first time in a long time.

And even in the few days since I arrived, there’s a sense that some of the people I’ve met will stay to become new friends too. Travel is great like that. I’m already helping one plan out a visit to Melbourne in November, which of course will include a catch-up.

I have some work to do while I’m here; quite distinct from what I do for a living, writing crime fiction has long been something I wanted to do, even since well before I was thrown out of the Supreme Court of Victoria one day 20 years ago after wandering into what I didn’t know was a sealed court hearing a case under permanent suppression orders, looking for story ideas (the door to the court, quite literally, was open when I arrived that morning…a point which did not amuse the judge when he demanded to know how I got in after spotting me in the back row, scribbling furiously in a notebook. But that’s another story). At the time of posting this I’ve written two-thirds of my debut crime novel — planned as the first in a trilogy — and with the third in the series intended to be set in Britain, primarily on the smuggler/shipwreck coast of Cornwall, there’s a couple of days’ detailed research of the place next week that I’m looking forward to enormously.

And that’s in addition to further work on the current manuscript, which I’ll also do as I make my way around the Kingdom.

On a personal note, there’s some head-clearing to finish off; completing the process of jettisoning permanently the baggage from a shattering, desperately sad experience that has haunted and tormented me very deeply for the past couple of years or so. Wonderful people can cause untold emotional trauma to others, even without wishing to, and sometimes the worst way to do so is by attempting to do nothing at all in response to a heartfelt overture of friendship. In short: so-called “ghosting,” as I believe poor behaviour is called these days, and in the case of someone I thought was a genuine friend the realisation she was in fact nothing of the sort — never mind anything else I thought of her — cut far, far deeper than the slight of not being accorded the courtesy of talking. It’s something I’m finally ready to consign to the dustbin of the past. And the past is past. A deep dose of the soul tonic that is Scotland, the Scottish wilderness, Scotland’s islands and its coasts, and some time among my ancestral Scottish countryfolk will help me round out the process of moving on from that once and for all.

And a deep dose of Scotland — even if I didn’t need it for the reason I’ve shared — is another powerful reason for my trip now.

And speaking of Scotland, I’m flirting with getting a tattoo in Glasgow next month: moi, with a tattoo! The idea is rightly ridiculous to those who know me well, but even so…I’ve never given a rat’s arse about what other people think (sometimes, admittedly, to my detriment) and I’m not about to start now. Glasgow is a fortnight away. The decision could go either way. Time will tell. It usually does.

Some may regard the idea of a personal travelog as an indulgence, a pretension, or a wank: good for them. To me it is simply a way to record the experiences, activities, images and reflections that constitute a trip for which I’ve waited a very long time. If you have stumbled across this site, I hope you enjoy joining me on my journey.

And on that point, I’ll probably experiment with the template this site is built on in the next few days; WordPress themes are great, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve set one of these sites up and chosen the wrong one to begin with. The content will remain the same, but the way it’s presented may…evolve. And of course, there will be plenty of posts and pictures as I make my way — once again — around the great UK.