Boarding

So this is it. That key-jangling idea has brought me to Heathrow's terminal 3, holding a ticket to New Zealand. I am so dog tired I can barely write. Preparation does nothing for me, though I'm sure my backpack feels better for it. I stayed up till 1am sharpening my knife last night... I have put all my faith into a sharp edge.

Here I sit waiting for the big silver bird to take me away and drop me into a new reality. I squat on my pack in a dessert of polished concrete. Pat is driving half way out of Heathrow by now, and I unwrap the small parcel he gave me as I left the car. The brown parcel paper falls away from the package to reveal the one thing I hadn't thought of: a beautiful, leather-bound hip-flask, filled with some 12 year old whiskey for cold forest nights and a metal inscription on the side: 'N1B'. It hits me like a ton of bricks: “Nice one bruvva”. My fingers push back tears.

And a book too - “Man on Wire”, the story of how a Frenchman put a tightrope between the twin towers and walked across it. Photographs of me and Pat celotaped inside, past and present, arm in arm, first as quarelling kids pushed together for the camera and lastly as adults caked in Glastonbury mud and a solid embrace of brotherly love.

Underneath this last picture sit his words: “Impossible is nothing”.