Thoughts from the South
Thought No. 5

Thoughts from the Midlands

I went up to the Midlands on Friday for assorted activities, company and drinks. I won't bore you with a list of the said, as most of the people reading this blog will know already. There was no single highlight to the trip. But if I were to continue the luminosity analogy, I suppose the six days were a bit like a fire torch being waved slowly by a night watchman. Let it suffice to say it was a great way to spend what will most likely be my last visit to Warwick.

But it wasn't until the very end of the trip that the word 'last' came to have any meaning for me. Sure I'd graduated a year ago, but I still knew people at Warwick. Well, this will not be so in a few months time. My link with that particular patch of land will be gone forever.

I won't recourse to exaggerated sentimentality. After all, it is possible to be sentimental over almost anything if you want to be - and believe me, some people are. But it's the strangest sort of farewell - you can't clasp a university or a playing field by the hand and wish it luck. And even if you do, it will never reciprocate, never give a solemn nod of the head or a gesture you can carry away with you. You can't say goodbye to a piece of land.

But you can write a self-indulgent blog post about it.