Heroes Not Zombies

Back home to France.

Last night I crossed over from England to France. I left Stirling early in the morning and had a long drive down through England to Portsmouth.

That’s Portsmouth harbour at night as the ferry left port.

The next photo is what I saw when I woke at six am. A smooth, deep blue water stretching as far as I could see, meeting a sky, not quite lit up by the dawn sun yet. Then the flash of a lighthouse caught my eye and looking more closely I could see the outline of the French coast.

The third photo, the long one, is taken as the ferry enters Saint Malo harbour, another lighthouse, echoing the first one, the sky lightening up and the land ahead becoming clearer.

Then another few hours driving down to the Charente.

It feels good to have travelled, lucky to have found an opening in the Covid regulations to let us see family again for the first time in a year. Blessed to have shared time and place back in my Scottish roots, and fortunate to be able to travel back to France, residency card in hand.

It was an ambition of mine to live in a different culture and language at some point in my life so when I turned 60, seven years ago, we sold up and moved, lock, stock and barrel, to France.

The Channel, or La Manche, might not be the biggest stretch of water separating two countries but each time I’ve made the crossing I’m acutely and instantly aware of the fact I’m moving from one culture to another.

We humans have always had a tendency to move around this Earth, and the artificial barriers we erect to separate our communities from each other have been redrawn repeatedly throughout history.

We tend to regard the States we live in as permanent but you don’t have to look back over many years to see quite clearly that’s just not true.

So as I make this crossing again I wonder about how the world might change, not just because of climate change and pandemics, but because of political movements, changing cultural values, and the fact that we are more obviously interconnected and interdependent now than ever.

There’s our challenge – to savour and champion our uniqueness and diversity while bringing our connections, deepening our relationships and enlarging the horizons of our compassion.