The Journey Begins

'It's an ill wind that blows no good', or so says the idiomatic adage. Although it is my intention to avoid the convenient linguistic device of the cliche, I left a very windy Lincolnshire yesterday afternoon with the simple intention of travelling to London to obtain a visa to allow me to travel to India. I arrived in the early evening at London's King's Cross station and headed across the city to Vauxhall to stay in Bonnington Square, where I spent several miserable months about seven years ago.
Some things have changed since then. I no longer feel quite as nervous as I then did about being in the metropolis. My anxieties have given way to a new fascination with the past, present and future. Rather like watching through a lens, almost a mediated image of reality, where observing oneself takes precedence over being oneself.
I have a plan. Quite an elaborate set of plans, which may or may not serve to propel me into a new existence; a new place at least, whereby I can return to a moment in my previous existence which, due to a somewhat cataclysmic set of circumstances, changed my life dramatically from the course upon which I was then headed. Similarly, I now choose to take another route and to complete an intention that has lain dormant for over twenty years.
My friends in the square are absent, away on various trips of their own, so initially it seemed a lonely, if not quite desolate place. A trip to the newly refurbished and now soulless pub didn't help dispel the illusion and the excellent chinese takeaway was closed, so dinner was eaten, alone, in the Coriander, a highly recommended and entirely satisfactory Indian restaurant around the corner from my accommodation.
The original intention of a dinner with my children fell inevitable victim to their weekend overindulgences and subsequent hangovers. Cyber space proved its usually helpful alternative to alleviate both isolation and potential boredom. I'd had a very nice weekend already, shared with my housemates and thoroughly enlivened by a spontaneous visit from the Princess of Poznan who proved, in her inimitable way, the perfect diversion from the melancholy feelings engendered by the onset of winter darkness and the anxiety of future uncertainty, God bless her.
And so the light breeze and early morning sun was a pleasant suprise and seemed to warm the souls of the masses who shone and radiated as they thronged the streets along which I travelled, rather hurriedly, to the Visa application office. It was a little difficult to find, but I guessed its general area and, after asking a young woman in an office, it proved to be mercifully close to where I had become confused. There were many many people there, but it was highly organised and very efficient as the numbers for the tickets, obtained on arrival, were called-out relentlessly like some kind of bizarre Bingo game. I sat next to an Asian gentleman (not really too suprisingly) who wore motorcycle leathers and whom I engaged in conversation by the simple expedient of requesting the seat on which he'd spread a copy of the Daily Star. He was very well-spoken and affable and after we'd both criticised his choice of reading material (he preferred the Daily Telegraph) he told me he was intending a holiday, with friends, in Goa from where he intended to visit his remaining family in Poona.
I asked him about his occupation and he revealed that he worked for the government agency responsible for identifying the sources of narcotic distribution and, consequently, contending with its social effects and users. He told me he wouldn't usually discuss it but, as he expected he'd never see me again, felt confident enough to unburden himself. Such is the nature of the traveller who will reveal themselves or create a legend to inhabit on their journey.
Soon his number came up and he was replaced by a much older Indian couple whose story would remain untold due to my own number rapidly appearing on the screen and demanding that I go to 'window number eleven'.
The transaction was swift and trouble-free and after paying an additional £7.40 I was assured my visa would be ready and delivered by courier within the week! My plans, to be in India by my birthday on the 15th of November, are beginning to look realistic, and unavoidable. I am both excited and apprehensive about the journey ahead, but I am beginning to feel prepared. Buoyed by a sense of purpose and optimism, and reassured by the encouragement of friends and acquaintances, I face the days and weeks ahead with the knowledge that there are many who envy the freedom with which I am approaching this part of my life, and the creative enthusiasm I have for the projects I have identified as my intentions, and the underlying reasons behind this potentially life-changing experience.