Countdown with Resfeber

October 2013

RESFEBER: From Swedish, the look of anxiety and excitement in one who is about to travel

Perfume River, Vietnam Lucy Munday 2012

I have finally finished procrastinating and booked a flight to leave England - in three month’s time.  My case of ‘Resfeber’ is intensifying as the countdown continues. The previous month’s realisation that I’ve got used to life here, mixes with the knowledge that I must carry on down the rabbit warren, creating a cocktail of appreciation for my current situation, fear of rocking the boat and a clingy desire to be a grown up - heaven forbid.

I know, what a first world problem. What do you do poor thing? Stay and live in an exciting city near to home, or travel to paradise? Well I tell you where the problem (if we can even call it that, maybe anxiety, misgivings or even just neurosis), I tell you where the misgivings come from - this symptom of ‘Resfeber’. I have got used to having a spice rack. And bed sheets, and drawers over living out of a bag. I have got used to being in the same time zone as friends and family. I have got used to having Branston pickle available in any supermarket for a fair price. Well, fairer than Australia.

These reasonings are fairly superficial and seemingly ridiculous ways to question why, how and when to spend a year in one of the most beautiful islands in the world. As it’s second time around, there should be more excitement than the first time. I know to some degree what awaits, and also how to deal with most logistical errors. I will meet many people, I will recognise the smell of the continent, the way the sunlight fades in to the horizon, the inspiring culture and sensory and tactile way of life there.

This is the big one. It’s a grander scale of travel than I have encountered before. Not only moving to one place far away, but a place where English isn’t the first language. Where I will stay for 12 months- the most sedentary I have been for over two years. Earning a wage far lower than what I am accustomed to. After so much upheaval, I’m testing myself with even more. I just have to ensure the reasons are right. First or second time, it doesn’t really feel like it’s happening until you’re on the plane. Even sitting on the plane, safety card in hand, is still quite surreal. When familiar with the sensation, does it not make it all the more or less intimidating?

…

Half way through the month I was sent to Scotland for work. How lovely, you think, and it was! London is an intoxicating great big bubble of a city, which to escape from is sometimes like taking in a big deep gulp of air after being underneath the surface of a busy swimming pool. Scotland is fresh, crisp and full of friendly people who walk at a normal speed. I enjoyed being away, and coming back, until I stepped off the train. The next few days were a concoction of being prodded with the inescapable annoyances of big city life that I could previously ignore. I gritted my teeth on public transport, huffed at queues and hated every person who barged in to me- apparently I’m so short I’m invisible.

Then I settled back in. I became a quick paced, barging, furrow-browed Londoner once more. I once had a friend from Germany come to stay with me, who described Londoners at rush hour as ‘all looking so stressed.’ I accepted once more the pace, and signs everywhere telling you to get a mortgage, contribute to the economy, just be happy with what you have and count your blessings. Of course there’s zero wrong with that, if it’s what you want. But I could be happy (because of experience) not adhering to the paradigm.

But as the days tick by I grow ever more attached to that paradigm. The ‘strike it hot-iron’ has grown a bit cool and the bull-shit fog encircles my head. It’s the fog that is inevitable in such a work driven city, where Friday night drinks rule and you wind up living for the weekend. My travel self- everyone has one- is the person in you that has a low bullshit capacity, who doesn’t buy package deals, or do what they’re supposed to, hates spending money on bed sheets and possibly questions the need to shower every day. My travel self is saying “You’ve changed.” My travel self resists walking as fast as everybody else in the crowd. My travel self prefers to gaze up at planes criss-crossing above the sky-scrapers. My London self (or England self?) is in a terrible rush, and does NOT speak to strangers. My London self wants to buy a coffee table and enjoy bottles of red wine with friends. So does my travel self. She just wants to do it somewhere else.

In the words of Mike Skinner, “Its the end of something I did not want to end…But something that was [possibly] not meant to be is done, And this is the start of what was.” *

Why I could possibly not be excited to leave for beautiful tropical Asia, is beyond me; how I could want to stay on in the soggy dark winter, when in the words of a good friend, ‘when you first got back to London you had this look on your face that just said, “what the fuck am I doing here?”.’ So after much neurotic over analysis, or deliberation, which seems to have no end as yet, I think I’ve found some answers. 

I’m happy. A happiness to be home that surprised me. There are worse reasons to be apprehensive. In fact there are far more valid reasons to be apprehensive, but there you have it. Life has moved me on to, rather shifting, new priorities, ideas and friends. I still want to be a travel writer, to travel the globe and experience as much of its’ variations as possible. At present however, returning to Asia feels like a visit in to something paused; some unfinished business with the hypnotic seedy underbelly and idyllic beautiful paradise of that continent. Am I doing the right thing, is a question I chew on over and over, like a rubbery old steak. I have to go back there to find out for sure. As the time slips by and my departure nears, I remember how tiring it can be to be constantly saying goodbye to people and I appease myself with the notion that nothing is final. The Resfeber symptoms subside and I reach for another cheese and pickle sandwich while I can.

* lyrics from ‘Empty Cans’ by The Streets, from the album ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ 2004.
If there is anyone out there reading this in a similar situation and feeling similar emotions, I thank you for bearing with my falderal and I hope it proves helpful and maybe even a little comforting.