Illustrative Journal 006
Reflections on a weekend away: Driving, Shakespeare, life and love.
Driving
At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, I don't understand why people need to drive so fast on the motorway. A weekend trip away saw my girlfriend and I head to Gloucester and Warwick via the M5 here in the UK. Much to my girlfriend's annoyance, I’m happy to just “poodle” along at 65-70mph in the slow lane. Being on the motorway in general you need eyes coming out of your backside and watching other drivers bomb it past, I'm like, do you really need to go so fast? Leave earlier I say! In any case I’m always of the mind of I’ll get there when I get there. Each to their own I suppose.
Still, on the rare occasion I do venture out of my poodling lane, I hate it when said fast drivers drive right up your backside like they’re looking for gold there so that you'll just move out of the way. I’ll admit there’s a different etiquette for motorway driving. I do my best to fit in with the beast that it is but I simply don’t like breaking the 70mph rule.
My apparently slow driving is legendary amongst family and friends. Whilst I don’t agree with overly fast driving and the fast drivers probably don’t agree with my slower driving, we have to make allowances for one another. As I said before, each to their own and ultimately, drive safe folks!
Shakespeare
The weekend trip saw my partner and I head over to Stratford Upon Avon for an afternoon. I had never been before and for those of you don’t know that’s where Shakespeare lived. What a beautiful little town with food markets and many many Tudor style buildings. Very picturesque. The local businesses really milk the Shakespeare name though… but for the floods of tourists this is gold I’m sure.
We didn’t go into any museums but we did visit the Shakespeare gift shop. As you’d imagine there’s a lot of Shakespeare stuff… obvs! What caught my eye were the graphic novels and manga book adaptations of his works. My initial thoughts with these publications were, “wow… they’re really milking this.” But actually on reflection I thought what an awesome idea! Whilst a graphic novel isn’t a very traditional medium for classic literature it does make it more accessible for younger audiences. If these versions can turn younger readers onto Shakespere then it could help keep the works alive for future generations.
Life & Love
“Life & Love” is a very broad subject, but for the most part of this weekend I thought about life and love a lot and how precious it all is.
Traveling this weekend was really about seeing my girlfriend Sam’s aunt who is in hospital with various health complications. She’s mostly out of the woods now and in really good spirits which is great news. Still, visiting hospitals and seeing the older generations growing older is a reminder of my own mortality. I’m 42 now and if I’m lucky I’ll have another 42 years. That said, more than likely I’m going to have my own health issues to deal with but whatever happens I hope I have a lot of life in my remaining years and of course love. Sam loves intensely. She didn’t hesitate to drive 3.5hours to Warwick from Plymouth in the late hours of last week to be with her aunt. She did that trip twice last week and a third time with me on the weekend.
Acts of love like that makes life richer when you’re healthy and when you’re ill, give you comfort when you’re not at your best. I hope when I’m in my autumn / winter years there’s a lot of love and people around me to cushion the harder times.
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