Someone said to me a few days ago that they had looked at my site and been pretty impressed but, they added, why don't I like my own country? Well the answer is that of course I like it. I may travel but I always come back. Just because I think Machu Picchu is one of the most wonderful sights in the world doesn't mean that I don't appreciate The Tower of London. Just because I love to see the sun go down on the plains of Africa doesn't mean that I don't also love to see it rise over an English country landscape. Just because I'm perfectly happy spending months on end sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag and checking under the tent for spiders and scorpions doesn't mean that I have some violent aversion to sleeping in a comfortable bed in my own house in Bilston. Just because I've been to the Chicago Institute of Art and the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology doesn't mean that I haven't been to the Tate Modern or the London Natural History Museum.
It just means that I have more to compare the home grown landscapes, buildings and museums to. Wanting to see the world doesn't mean that you don't like home, it means that you appreciate that home, wonderful as it is, is part of something much larger and even more wonderful - the World.
They did have a point though. In among all the wonders of travel it's easy to overlook the wonders of staying at home. Until now there have been no pictures of home on the site at all. I intend to redress the balance.
I also intend to take a few liberties. I may be English but my Passport says that I am a citizen of somewhere called 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' so that's what I intend to put here - more or less. As I have never been to Northern Ireland I can hardly include photographs of it - maybe later -but I have been to the Republic of Ireland and I may include some of that instead. As for Scotland and Wales well I expect I'll find plenty of photographs of them to include.
Anyway, definitions of nationality aside, there is one overwhelming reason that I'll always come home no matter how far I may travel. I don't care for the beer anywhere else.
