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Travel-sick and Homesick
Jul. 30th, 2020 10:12 amI remember being puzzled by those two terms as a child. Travel sickness made more sense to me: you felt ill BECAUSE of the travel and the motion of the particular vehicle you happened to be in. But homesickness meant you were sick of NOT being home! And it wasn't really a sickness at all, but more of a longing or a sadness. Now, though? I think the one big thing that just might reverse the way we parse those two terms is the Covid-19 pandemic!
Many of us are now thoroughly sick of NOT being able to travel. We're itching to escape the confines of our house or studio apartment or room in a retirement residence and get out to see the world!
As for homesickness? Yep, most of us are pretty sick of staying home all the time. Or maybe we're home BECAUSE we're sick, either with Covid-19 or something else. Kids who used to eagerly look forward to getting out of school for the summer are now hoping to be allowed back there in September.
Summer is a time for "beach reads" and many people of my generation had a few Enid Blyton books in their piles of light summer reading. Noddy books for younger kids and Famous Five or Secret Seven for the slightly older ones. Now, for the parent and grandparent set, there's a line of "Enid Blyton for Grown-ups". Written by Bruno Vincent, they are decidedly tongue-in-cheek takes on the Famous Five as they deal with 21st century problems like social media, Brexit and now, Covid-19.
I certainly haven't read all of them but I did buy the latest one, Five Go Absolutely Nowhere. From the blurb on the back cover:
Join George, Dick, Anne, Julian and Timmy the Dog as they go into lockdown on Kirren Island. But can they get their laptops to work and forage enough to survive? And who's hijacked Dorset's entire supply of lavatory paper?
Best of all, these books incorporate some of the illustrations from the original Famous Five books, but with different captions. One of my favourites reads "We're stuck playing charades, Julian, because you got us kicked off all those pub quizzes on Zoom!"
Hmmm... sounds like they're homesick in both senses of the word!
Many of us are now thoroughly sick of NOT being able to travel. We're itching to escape the confines of our house or studio apartment or room in a retirement residence and get out to see the world!
As for homesickness? Yep, most of us are pretty sick of staying home all the time. Or maybe we're home BECAUSE we're sick, either with Covid-19 or something else. Kids who used to eagerly look forward to getting out of school for the summer are now hoping to be allowed back there in September.
Summer is a time for "beach reads" and many people of my generation had a few Enid Blyton books in their piles of light summer reading. Noddy books for younger kids and Famous Five or Secret Seven for the slightly older ones. Now, for the parent and grandparent set, there's a line of "Enid Blyton for Grown-ups". Written by Bruno Vincent, they are decidedly tongue-in-cheek takes on the Famous Five as they deal with 21st century problems like social media, Brexit and now, Covid-19.
I certainly haven't read all of them but I did buy the latest one, Five Go Absolutely Nowhere. From the blurb on the back cover:
Join George, Dick, Anne, Julian and Timmy the Dog as they go into lockdown on Kirren Island. But can they get their laptops to work and forage enough to survive? And who's hijacked Dorset's entire supply of lavatory paper?
Best of all, these books incorporate some of the illustrations from the original Famous Five books, but with different captions. One of my favourites reads "We're stuck playing charades, Julian, because you got us kicked off all those pub quizzes on Zoom!"
Hmmm... sounds like they're homesick in both senses of the word!
