Monday April 21 2008

It’s universally acknowledged that Mondays are rubbish. For the Iscaria family, this was the start of a normal working week. Brodos and I felt a million miles from everyday life, from drudgery, boredom, chores and normal sleep patterns. But we did our bit to sympathise by waking up before 8am.

Within an hour, we were at the station. And as we said goodbye to the physical form of the text-and-pixel based entity we had known for two years, as we shook the hand of the stranger who had invited us into his house with open arms, as we smiled, with genuine warmth, at this person from a far away place that we now knew, once and for all, we could call a friend, I realised something truly important. I had forgotten my iPod.

But that wasn’t all. Our fears of awkwardness, our concerns about what awaited us in these unchartered corners of the internet, were abandoned too. No longer was our ill-planned adventure an uncertain leap into the unknown. It was irrefutably an incredibly good idea. In that welcoming, family home, that beautiful, snowy landscape, we had left behind our worries.

It was a heartening thought. I needed that. With no music, the next 12 hours were going to have to be spent talking to Brodos.