The past may be a foreign country, but Brexit notwithstanding you can still dip your toes in the warm seas that surround its distant shores. So occasional visits occur, non dom status mitigating the costs, we traipse paths we’ve already taken, roads and tracks already discovered yet somehow forgotten.  Memories of holidays taken, rides enjoyed, and ice-creams eaten all add to the joy that is a visit to ‘history’. 

The past holds so much, so many decisions decided, so much pontification taken, and the whole painfully slow process that was endured.  But now we are beyond that, and so looking back, we cast our eyes with proverbial 20/20 vision hindsight that allows what was once so very complicated to be seen with crystal clarity.  Behind us also sits the errors we made, the lessons we learnt but more importantly we can look over our shoulder and see the clarity of vision, the undiluted passion, the undaunted enthusiasm that brought us to the place in time and space we now occupy. 

And that is something we should revisit, and review more than we do. 

The great ‘why’ was answered so very long ago, that moment of clarity that led us through the cloud of self-doubt should be tasted again, memories refreshed. 

Why we started, why we continue we’ve already established needs no third-party validation.  As the poet eloquently states, the prose exists for its own purpose and no other.  To chase plaudits is an impossible purist, a charge (tilt) at windmills that is unprofitable and as misguided as Miguel de Cervantes described.  I cannot please or address the needs of the crowd, I cannot carve David to meet desires and ideas that are not mine – I’m not that good. 

What I can do is create what I enjoy, write where my own fingers tap and accept that some won’t like, but maybe some will (which is nice), but I will write not from a committee of approved ideas but from my own flawed imagination.  To thy own self be true etc.   

I cannot get defensive against critique, I cannot seek and chase approval, I must, I absolutely must remind myself of the first principle, the prime directive in that I write because I like it and hope others will. 

So if you’ve read it my sincere thanks, after that I have no obligation over you, reading is sufficient, your pleasure in my scribbles a bonus.