‘It’s Rats to the Ratrace. It’s Rats on the Run…’ I Guess even rats can get tied up in twists. Hard not to see it as some kind of fail, back to scratching around on the decks going down, kicking hard to keep calm in the water. We’re back in UK with the same burn to go, to be living someplace somehow else.

What went wrong? Almost nothing. Three months in the US driving East coast to West then a month in Saigon, Vietnam…

Naivety, sure. Never done this before. But naivety rings like a slack jawed excuse to come back to cut ties and torn ends. Sold myself as gone long term, we’re back four months later, the pats that I got on the back for escaping are blister pack stings I can’t shake. We had the last gig and I said my goodbyes, my feet left their last steps on the stones of the town and now I’m back tracking them down.

We came back just to work out where next, find work, relocate and get gone. Seen as teaching plans crumbled and courses collapsed and we’d not laid the groundwork we should have, we’d return and regather then go hell for leather, we were happy we had it mapped out. But bad news got snagged at our ankles, each day back’s brought a reason to reduce our vision, ambition stripped of its admiral stripes.

Our heads that kept high as we came through Heathrow, they dropped by the inch by the hour. It didn’t take long for our chins to hit chest, took a week to prise out of my ribs. Pride, fear, soft calculations, repeating in rings to hard maths. What did I have Vs what did I gain Vs what did I loose and for what.

It’s taken four weeks or more to get out of the wallow and the maths is beginning to change; a mantra from a mentor in formative years is stirring the words and equations… ‘luck is where preparation and opportunity meet’, it sings like a link in a chain.

So get busy preparing, head down and hard yards. Long game for long gone, long term. Look out for a trade I can take to wherever, retrain, reset and relaunch. Keep open minds for a lead to sniff out.

I saw my first slice of the world. We had our first taste of what’s waiting. And now things look brighter more often than not (brighter but no less uncertain), I don’t feel half as bad getting back to instalments, there’s still plenty of strange to retrace…

…until we see more someplace other.

– Rats on the Run.