A comfort zone

I'm not sure whether to rate my bed as more in the comfort zone than my armchair in reach of the TV control.

Out of the front door, the car, is another zone of comfort with an added advantage, it offers mobility too.

A comfort zone is a zone where one is not only physically comfortable but also has a psychological aspect too. 

It is invariably the "mental component" which can cause the most trouble as we get older.  For instance in a foreign country, with a lot of unknowns there is the problem with our inability to ask for directions or get information, there is the lack of any familiarity which effects the minds normal "referencing system"  hindering us and making it difficult to recognise where we are.

  

When young, confidence is high but eventually this confidence begins to wain and our experience teaches that danger lurks all around.

Accommodation, communication, problems with transport and even money, these things seem to weigh heavily on the mind as one ponders the "what if" game. Experience should provide a shield but the sublime ignorance of youth wins every time.    

Of course I am not talking about the package holiday where one is shepherded from place to place and meal time, to meal time. I am talking of the free spirit who sets off without a fixed itinerary, drifting with the swell to see where the current takes them !!!

The modern holiday begins on the internet and a trawl of the area you wish to visit. Google maps take one virtually into the hotel room and one can book from the armchair the flight, the train,the hotel and with a hole in the wall just around the corner, a connection to your bank !!!

My own trip a few years ago to the continent was very ad hoc.  Andrew dropped me at the ferry in Harwich.  In the Hook of Holland I wandered across to the local railway station, rucksack on the back, and caught a train to Rotterdam. The ticket office in main station in Rotterdam was the next hurdle buying a ticket to Wuppertal in Germany. The train was due to arrived at Wuppertal at 11.15pm.

As the train moved through the darkening landscape I wondered if I would have difficulty finding a hotel room, the train ploughed on into what was now a pitch black night. The station for West Wuppertal loomed up out of the darkness and I got off. This is strange I thought, it didn't fit my assumption of the city and looking at my watch I saw it was only 11.07. This can't be it - get back on board !!!      German "punctuality" has many blessings ?

It was beginning to rain as I crossed the empty square outside the railway station and headed towards the lights. At this time of night one is acutely aware of the potential danger from the type of late night characters that come alive in the city streets of most towns and cities. I found a hotel, on reflection, a hotel which seemed to attract a preponderance of friendly  men !! I decided the best place would be my room and slept soundly. 

In the morning I heading for my destination, a village about 12 miles away, a bus would take me there but which bus and who to ask ?

On the way home I bought a ticket to Amsterdam to visit an old friend and after that the final train journey back to the ferry terminal and across the Channel and home. 

Finding a route,solving the incidents that emerged on the way this was the grist to my mill when I was young, wandering from but now I seem more exposed and unsure. Age it seems opens the imagination to all kinds of dread !!!