This always makes me uneasy. Mostly he finds travelling very stressful - he has to travel very light because his 16 years of arthritis have left him... well... not nearly as strong as he'd like to be. That he never has his own toothpaste is not frugality; it falls into the same camp as his now abandoned habit of tearing the pages out of paperbacks once he has read them: he's avoiding carrying the weight.
We were travelling together yesterday. He could carry his stuff and I could carry mine, except for up the stairs. They were too much. I had both the inflatable matresses (for guests), the tripod and the juicer (Martin's osteopath has recommended vegetable juice as often as possible to help with an array of M's frankly self-agrandising ailments). And as I'm a mountain goat by nature, I actually enjoyed all the heaving and sweating, though not the fear that someone would take the case away to be blown up as I abandoned it at the bottom/top of every staircase.
His sheer joy at virtually everything he saw out of the window between Kings Cross and Waverley stations should have been a pleasure, and I sound a bit bah-humbug, but we've been in each other's company a great deal since he arrived nearly three weeks ago and his declaration that he "loves differently-coloured cows!" just grated. I had to point out that a few miles back he had declared his passion for exclusively black ones. "Yes, but that was in the countryside, this is in the village." He was basically irrepressable because the sun was shining! He was not travelling alone! There were really weird people on the train for him to stare at!
Arriving in beautiful Edinburgh soon put the kybosh on some of the mood as our taxi climbed past big, dark buildings towards the Meadows: the buildings make him claustrophobic, he's obssessed with light and anywhere even slightly hilly is tough not only on his remaining joints but on his recently-mended heart-valve. Back to normal service.
Rebbecca, I love you!
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