Before, I could hardly manage a week in one location without being overwhelmed by the urge to get on a train, a bus, a plane and just GO. For the last three years or so I’ve been spending 30% of my income on travel, mostly domestic, but a fair portion international. Some of this has been because I tend to date men who live far away from me (I like em at a distance), but a lot of it is to do with movement. I like to move. I like the sensation of watching the world whizz by as I sit next to a train window or on the top deck of a bus. I tend to sleep best on planes and trains: the hum of the engine, and the feeling of being cocooned whilst covering vast distances makes me feel both safe and free – the perfect combination. The times when I’ve worked for a company I’ve always enjoyed commuting – the longer the commute the happier I am at work, generally. I like the feeling of covering a distance in the morning and the evening; it creates a greater sense of achievement, and heightens the difference between work and play. Movement is also an escape from the confines of childhood. As a kid, my turning circle was pretty big by today’s terms. I used to cover miles on my bike, and the journey to and from school was a fourteen mile round trip each day, but something in me always craved more. Perhaps it was because I could see mountains from my garden, and knew they were farther away than I could walk. It created a sense of magnitude, and a fascination with the idea of travel. I didn’t leave Britain until I was 14, and the feeling I had as the plane took off for my first international journey was so epic I think I’ve been chasing it ever since.

Latterly, though, all this movement has been less about going places and more about escaping from myself. The eighteen months prior to July were tough – the toughest of my life, in fact. Moving was at times a necessity, rather than a choice. And so when I returned from the US, I resolved to stay still for a month, and so I have. I’m getting on a plane again in a day or so, and then probably a number of buses and trains before September, but when I return, I plan to spend more time practising this whole staying in one place malarkey. The last few weeks have been the happiest and calmest I have experienced in several years. I’m not quite sure if the stillness has caused the happiness, or if the happiness has enabled me to be still at last, but the two go together I think. Michael Stipe explains it better than me: