Dad’s here for his biannial visit and suddenly I feel like I’m the parent. I picked him up from his friend’s house after I’d finished work and stood there in the lounge, waiting for him with my coat on while he collected his belongings. On the table were little Christmas cookies cut into stars and heart shapes and it was like I was picking up a kid from a birthday party.

By the front door there was a row of small gold bags filled with goodies. All that was missing was the sponge cake wrapped in a napkin that had stuck to the gooey icing.

So anyway, I drove him home - to mine - and he told me all about the past month and a bit he’d spent in South America. Buenos Aires, mainly, with a bit of Uraguay thrown in for good measure. Of course, none of us had known quite where he was most of the time as beyond a postcard to say he’d arrived and another that turned up after he’d come back home and headed up north, nobody knew how to get in touch.

By the time we got out, the car was filled with what I thought was the smell of leather seeping out of his cases, but it turns out it was antelope.

Of course, all these exotic tales mean I’m craving some travel again. Sunshine and a bit of adventure would be just perfect round about now, and the Christmas TV guides being stuffed full of ads for overseas adventures certainly don’t help.

Fortunately, tomorrow is my last day in the office for this year and beyond the few pages I’ll be bringing home to write over the break I intend to take full advantage of the time off. I want to start 2004 fully recharged.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2003 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.