Sun on Rosyth

There is something about coming home, or homecoming. Not that I really have a heimat, a place that I have hung my hat alongside and after generations. Who of us does anymore?

To come back to 14c and heavy showers throughout the afternoon was a shock. Particularly as our flight was shunted off to a stand that kissed the city’s park and ride. One little indignity after another traded for the wonder of flight and jet propulsion.

As we crossed the Dover Strait/Pas de Calais I wondered what it was like dodging in a tiny boat the down Strait traffic in its implacable progress. Lucky lucky me with my G&T at 10,000 feet with St Dominic’s Preview on the earphones.

And yet and yet, if you will, swopping that expansive Tuscan outlander view under a hostile burning sun for a limited functional interiority pulled me up short. But as the rain gave way to a gentle, blustery grey light of different possibilities and the chat flowed in my only native tongue with old familiars there was an ease and simplicity, close and forgiving that placed our slightly embattled sense of tolerated exotics in sharp relief.