Article by Phil Brown

Phil Brown - Journalist - Author Profile | Email | Website As a journalist I mostly write on the arts & entertainment. Read my weekly journalism in Brisbane News. As an author I write about myself and, if that sounds self-indulgent, you don't know the half of it. Mind you if you read either of my memoirs - Travels with My Angst or Any Guru Will Do, all will be revealed. Available as Speaker - humorist focusing on problems associated with existential angst and life's journey. Brisbane QLD Australia 3000 Please e-mail

EAST, WEST ...HOME IS BEST

Is it wrong of me to confess that the best part of a holiday for me is getting home again? In fact almost always, upon departure, for domestic destinations or foreign shores, my parting comment goes something along the lines of: “I can’t wait till we get back.”

I always miss home and if the British poet Philip Larkin (one of my favourites) is to be believed, home misses me too.

In his wonderful poem Home Is So Sad he writes:

“Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped in the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back.”

Finding things just as we left them when we stepped back in the door after a recent holiday in Bali was, to put it mildly, bliss.

Not that I don’t like going away, despite my anxiety about change in any form. I have a friend who gets going-away pains. Me, I feel bilious for days before departure but I’m fine once I get there.

I enjoy being in exotic places and Bali was brilliant, although, as with any holiday, it had its moments. One of them happened when we were watching a movie on cable television in our Ubud hotel room. The program was interrupted by a flashing sign that warned: “Potential Tsunami!”

This is not what you want to see while staying on an island in a region known for volcanoes and earthquakes, one of which had apparently just occurred off Sumatra. Luckily the earth didn’t move for us and the whole thing turned out to be a false alarm.

There was another minor incident when our car got stuck in a ditch in the backblocks of the beachfront tourist hub of Seminyak. Hopefully the startled locals who came out of their huts to see what all the commotion was didn’t speak English well enough to be offended by my effing and blinding.

Luckily a passing tradesman, in a small truck, had some rope in the back and was able to drag the car out. Our driver was mortified and refused to accept a gratuity at the end of the ride. So there was an upside.

The rest of the time things went swimmingly but even when we were having a ball lounging by the pool at the Bali Hyatt, Sanur or luxuriating at the exclusive Villa Sungai, where we were treated like minor royals, I kept having tantalising flashes of Brisbane.

I imagined that moment when we would walk back in the front door and I would feel that peace that transcends all understanding.

When I get back home this feeling of wellbeing lasts for weeks.

Then I replay the holiday over and over again in my mind’s eye as a kind of home movie. And it all seems so much better in retrospect, enjoyed in the comfort and privacy of home sweet home.

 

30 Apr 2012

Article/Information supplied by Phil Brown

Disclaimer - Any general advice given in any article should not be relied upon and should not be taken as a substitute for visiting a qualified medical Doctor.

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