12 July

I've travelled quite a lot. I hate the process of actually getting from one place to another, packed into planes like sardines, interrupted sleep, lost bags, foul shared toilets and showers etc. I don't mind it when I arrive, but this is where I think what I post about travel isn't clear. The problem for me with travel is there's an impossible tension between being a native, and being a visitor. Being a visitor is not fun, you can't really ever settle like you can in your own home. Try staying even with a friend for a few weeks and watch how tense both of you become. But you're not native either. It feels very ungrounded, for me, unless your real purpose of travel is the Instagram and Facebook posts to say 'hey look where I am'. Carrie Bickmore talks about that a bit here, how the social media images of her holiday were't really how the holiday was.