When does a trip begin? Is it when the contours of daily life take on a transparent aspect; when you note that the days and weeks pass with a rhythmic quality akin to the bump of moving train wheels but you feel you have travelled no-where. Something dancing, something formless like a swarm of midges on the bridge in the half light at dusk appears and disappears and the urging for otherness sharpens. The call of waterbirds passing overhead refers mysteriously to faraway lands.
Tickets booked. Passports out far too early on the sideboard. Surprising seams of travel items punctuate domestic disorder; mosquito spray, clothes retrieved from tucked away drawers and blue lumpen velveteen travel pillows. Daily life is meted out not in coffee spoons but in a routine of vaccinations as the freezer is gradually emptied and offending unfinished jams assembled. Leaking gutters and erratically functioning hot water systems exert an unfamiliar imperative. My inbox now contains E-mails, not just from friends, Amazon Autumn sale and invidious unwanted Viagra suppliers, but from Cuq, Vu thi Thu Hang, Dang Hang and Dung offering advance welcome in Hanoi.
Our contact with Vietnam is insubstantial. As a fifteen year old in the sixties I demonstrated against the war in Grosvener Square. Last year we travelled in Laos and Vietnam for a month following my voluntary redundancy from work as an educational project manager. Now, in our later fifties, with professional educational experience behind us, myself and Peter are going to teach in Vietnam for three months, first at Hanoi University and then in far-flung village schools. We will be guinea pigs for a new scheme sponsored by Hanoi university and an Australian charity aiming to offer volunteer engagement in the Vietnamese educational system.
I pass an ex pupil Jehova's witnessing our streets with her thirteen year old twins, Justice and Treigh. They are the same age as was their mother when I taught her; a quiet star of creative writing. I tell her of my imminent travels. Are you doing a Blog? she says. Thanks for the idea Angela. I'll have a go. The charity want a record too. Let's hope the quality of the writing of Blackbird Leys teenagers twenty eight years ago at Redefield School Oxford, doesn't show me up.
We prepare uncertainly; Peter as a visiting lecturer in computing, myself supporting the teaching of English in village primary schools and giving English conversation at Hanoi University. On the kitchen table is a mound of preschool books and props, including a large cloth caterpillar and assortment of plastic fruit for the very hungry caterpillar to eat, split pins and paper plates for making clocks. Whether this kind of approach will fit into the Vietnamese system I have no idea. There might be an embarrassing problem with my pre-school interactive offerings if the kids are relatively fluent and used to copying off the board. Let's hope it's a comprehensive system – my materials are firmly geared to engage all abilities! I can both use the cloth caterpillar and support small group discussion on agriculture and crop rotation plus talk about varieties of home cooking items. For the University I have collated a series of social articles omitting, in deference to my stereotype of the country, Guardian articles on homosexual rights and world politics.
'Just one more summer that's all I want' said my aged mother in the biting cold of February. It is September now. We've had no summer. The blackberry bushes have turned brackish and damp before bearing fruit. I had thought that in the Asian heat it would be the skeletal brushing leaves of an English Autumn I would miss, but as I pass through the cutting beside the lake I realise it will be my family and friends. You can't plan everything. The imagined vistas of my voyage desert me as I softly kiss goodbye my tired mother's cheek. Her skin is papery thin.