Tickets bought! Hotel booked! Foot-broken!

Between the time I wrote the first entry for this blog and now, I went to a family wedding and promptly tripped and broke my foot/ankle/heel.  I have been recuperating for three months but it still hasn't healed properly.  I'm hoping it will.  I have a few physical issues that make the idea of traveling, walking, etc., more difficult than most. My age, not being fit-it's against me.

I thought about the risk I am taking in committing to this trip without knowing how my foot will feel, without knowing if, for many reasons, I would be able to make my time in London and Cornwall "worthwhile."  Would I see enough places, would I feel I had wasted my money if half my time was spent in a hotel room resting, or sitting on a bench in a park after seeing one or two sights, at most, a day?  I realized that I don't know the answer to this and it doesn't matter.  I could get sick there-people do.  Anything could happen.  Everything could happen.  It often does.

But, one thing I am sure of is nothing will happen if I don't go, if I do nothing.  I need to extend this lesson to the rest of my life, I know.  For now, I am extending it to doing something I have wanted to do for so many years.  Whether it is pleasurable or not (and I have no doubt much of it will be), the significant thing is that I am finally doing it.  Me-who rarely does anything these days.

I am terrified in some ways. I haven't traveled much, never alone overseas, and not at all for many years.

But-I'm really going.  I'm really going!!! ;-)

When I was a child, I lived my life in bedrooms.  Bedrooms that swept me away from the common and uncommon family dysfunctions that so many are familiar with.  In my bedroom, I found myself gravitating to books that took place on the rocky Cornish coast of Cornwall, from gothic classics to the more modern Daphne Du Maurier and Victoria Holt novels.  I felt a kinship that went to my core, as if I had been reincarnated from this evocative, passionate landscape.  As someone who grew up having never seen the ocean, my affinity was unusual.  As I read more and started watching BBC/PBS television, my dreams extended to London and its rich history of kings and queens, the class system that divided the population and its effects, the white buildings with wrought iron surrounding them, the richness of its ethnic diversity.  I decided to go to England when I was 12 years old.  Almost fifty years later, I have decided to make my dream a reality.  This Spring, barring unforeseen circumstances,  I will make that trip across the pond, to London and Cornwall, and I hope this blog speaks to those who never thought their dreams could come true, regardless of the specific place that speaks to them.

I hope you are inspired by my journey, and its' preparations.  Here is a toast to dreams!