Home from Home

Today is our last day of virtual vacation and I have to confess that I am really going to miss Suffolk and my virtual home at the Swan! I have become quite fond of the place! You know, the funny thing is that although Suffolk is undoubtedly beautiful, historical and culturally fascinating, ALL of England is beautiful, historical and culturally fascinating. Whether you visit Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, Tyneside or London, you will find interesting places to visit, old and comfortable hotels or Bed and Breakfasts, eccentric folks to talk to and yes, I do dare say it, good, tasty food. You may have to do your research to find it sometimes but it's there. Real England. Ancient, mysterious, atmospheric, and then again, contemporary, cross-cultural and fast-paced, Quite a lot for such a small island!

Today we're going to leave Suffolk and wend our way south prior to our virtual trip home to Texas from London Gatwick Airport. Because Gatwick is so close to where I grew up, I thought it would be nice to spend a day in Sussex prior to our flight home. So, we are going to spend our last day on this side of the pond in Brighton.

It feels funny to be back in Sussex. In Suffolk I really felt like a tourist and a foreigner. In Sussex I feel a real sense of returning home. I look for faces I might recognize and wonder whether my own face is recognizable after 13 years away. I identify what is a sense of loss. When I last lived here my Grandparents were still alive and my own nuclear family still lived here. Now they have either gone on to better things or emigrated. What is now London's second airport was once my Grandfather's delivery route when he was a butcher's boy on his push bike! When you land at Gatwick you can clearly see Gatwick Village Church where my Grandfather would have worshipped (had formal worship been up his street!).

In Brighton we walked down by the sea front between the two piers, one now a condemned and burnt out wreck and the other a grade 2 listed building but in need of some serious TLC. Luckily nobody was down at the nudist beach today so we didn't have to have any awkward conversations or explosions of embarassed and unsubtle giggling! We admired the distressed elegance of the Georgian architecture and ooohed and aaahed at the unlikely sight of the Royal Pavillion, an Indian looking palace built by the Prince Regent in the eighteenth century shortly before that trifling matter of 1776......

Brighthelmstone as it used to be called was once a smuggling center on the south coast and the smugglers used to hide and sell their wares in the warren of narrow streets just off the front, called The Lanes. These days you are more likely to find deliciously expensive boutiques, eateries and antique shops. And in one of those very nonchalent English juxtapositions, you will also find there a Quaker's Friends' House.

We eat overpriced sea food. No kalamari or squid for us however - but whelks and jellied eels, the kind of fruit of the sea local to Brighton. The kind of food my grandparents would have eaten along with a Mr. Whippee ice cream and loads of cups of sweet tea. OK - so in my virtual reality that's what we ate but in truth there's no way on earth that children 1, 2 and 3 would have eaten anything of that kind! They would have been more fascinated by visiting an English McDonalds! They would have loved a stick of luridly pink peppermint Brighton rock however!

Tomorrow we will take the train from Brighton through the Sussex Weald, the rolling south downs where I took so many walks as a child. We'll stop at my old home town's railway station, race through the village where I was born and eventually get off the train at Gatwick airport. I'll buy every magazine and English candy or souvenir available in duty free before we board the plane home. Home from home. Hard to say which is which any more.

I never really have been to Suffolk! I'd really like to go now though. All the people I have contacted for their permission to use images from their websites were super friendly and helpful. Thank you for accompanying me these last few days. We should do it again one day! Say in about ten weeks time when I'm next off school and looking for a distraction!? Just tell me where you would like to go!