Roots

 It's a strange year this year of the water rabbit ... 

Plans laid down , dashed to pieces and subsequent re drafts and contingency put into action , only to have to be honed and revised add lib in accordance with the temperament of the tide ...

Such is my experience with the old saying " the best laid plans of mice and men can often go awry " that I have sort of found a stoic comfort in being constantly on the road 

The rolling stone gathers no moss ....but these days I'm quite partial to a bit of moss ,I have been wrestling internally for a decade about how unwelcome I have been made to feel in this my native land - only by the bureaucrats and the adminz , the political and the management classes ....   but the more I have travelled around the more it appears to me that the favouritism that is granted by ' the mate from the council ' is indicative , not of proficiency in any given discipline ...well other than filling in funding applications and kissing ass 

It's been due to this seemingly corrupt little landscape that over the past ten years and more I've wandered from country to country ...  Looking for the perfect place to be ..the ideal location to sit and hide while the whole world eats itself 

But , whilst in this nomadic pilgrimage, I have bumped into so many souls , fellow travellers and static natives alike ...I have previously written about the many campfire reflections with the children of the world's countries and customs - each of us searching for our place in this burgeoning international community of wreckheads and lost souls 

I drew the conclusion a long while ago , that what all this direction less , rudder less near idealistic and hedonistic pursuit is futile ...

Paradise lost isn't out there ...and all of us of various ages all running away from the injustices of our own countries is just nuts , looking for an ideal out there somewhere , in a hammock , soaked in rum on some beach somewhere with room service and a soundtrack of your choice ?? Is that really what we are all looking for ?? 

Personally I doubt it , I've tried excessive indulgence of many kinds    .... The inevitability is always a hangover , of one form or another ... 

And yet , as great as travel is for a person ... certainly as beneficial a pursuit as reading - but that is to say , that if you spend all of your time reading mills and boon novels then you probably aren't going to be as well rounded an individual as someone with a more diverse reading habit 

The same is true of travel , trust me ...if you go somewhere , somewhere you don't even speak the language and you have a credit card and a plane ticket home - ok you might have a nice time , enjoy the weather and some time off - go to that same place without the return flight home , or the credit card for emergencies ....or either , you'll have a wholly different experience, sure it might be challenging ...but it will certainly render the more rounded individual at the end of it.

There is a common reflection that is batted around by the well seasoned traveller though ...and it's sling the lines of - the problem with travelling extensively is you start to loose a sense that you belong in a single place , that any one place can encapsulate ' home ' - because there are so many beautiful places and beautiful people out there in the world , even in comfortable surroundings you nostalgically ling for the smell of the jungle , the smell of the sea , the smell of the desert ....so you are always in a mild state of longing 

So to turn another phrase ...you get the travelling bug , and so the whole conundrum begins again 

It's nice to travel - but it's nice to belong too 

It's with this in mind that this little reflection came to fruition ... 

The spoils of war are going to yield a permanent rural retreat in South West Devon - this off-grid smallholding will be the u.k base of operations from this summer 

All of the cargo containers and scattered pop up enterprises will be in house in our beautiful and bespoke education facility in Devon 

At the same time - all of our scattered interests throughout Europe and North Africa will also be condensed into our brand new 3 floors bespoke arts facility in Nieuwmarkt Amsterdam ! 

Going back to the schedule of 3 weeks of the month sailing / farming in the u.k 

One week of the month in Amsterdam 

Plus the touring schedule .... 

So keep an eye on this ...it might be, once again, quite extraordinary xx