It's been a while (let's say a few decades) since I heard someone mention the Glaswegian word hameldamie. For those struggling with google translate, it simply means home will do me, and is used in response to someone asking where you're off to on your hols this year.
For a small boy who first heard this word, it was generally associated with poverty, and the inability to afford an exotic vacation abroad. To stay at home during the summer holidays in other words was considered abberrant, and the sole choice of those who had no choice. This state of affairs affected me deeply without me really knowing it, as things generally do. It informed my decision later on to travel the world by teaching English, and to get away from the 'poverty' of staying in my own country. Nowadays, things are a little different, as I can now see my 'home' here in a different light. One is bound to, after spending the best part of two decades living and working in a dozen, often wildly incongruous, countries.
Only long miles of strangeness can lead to one's home, writes Kenneth White somewhere.
Whereas once I was blind....
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