The long walk home

Many a novel has been written about the heartbreak and beauty of returning home. So many sighs. So many landscape descriptions. So much rain.

Picture: a man observes his town from the window of an approaching train. You can read the nervous energy on his face--tense but expressionless. The desolate view is both familiar and alien.

He watches someone walking by, possibly an old person--the figure a metaphor (just in case this isn't sufficiently heavy handed for you) for all that has happened during his absence. The man then attempts to eat/sleep/speak, but to no avail--he is no longer of that place. He no longer knows its ways.

That same sort of poetic melancholy hit me today as I rentered Tesco, the UK's premier bad supermarket. I was away from London for less than two years, and yet all that has changed--and has not changed--in this country was reflected off Tesco's shiny, slightly dirt-specked surfaces. I stared at the lines on my hands and realized: This. is. England.

I mean, seriously, not a single new candy in two years? How is that even possible?