Procrastination, I’ve got it. For the best part of, if not more than six years I’d been talking about how some day I’d take a mad notion and do this. Jump on the bike, book the ferry and go see some people in Chorley that I haven’t seen in probably close to 20 years. Maybe more out of the feeling that if anything happened to them and I hadn’t gone over, I’d regret it for anything between a year and the rest of my life.

The trip I’d some day take never really materialised despite numerous google maps I created and several queries on the price of the ferry crossing. Some day turned into today and I find myself aboard the floating crèche that is the Irish ferries Jonathan Swift. I’m fairly sure too that the disagreeable chap that barked instructions at me in broken English on the car deck has well and truly screwed the new saddle on the bike too. Shit.

Before I arrive in Chorley, I need to constantly remind myself that it won’t be the same place I knew from our family visits there in the 80’s and early 90’s. People I regarded as being invincible back then will have grown older. Only in direct proportion to how older I’ve grown I suppose. I don’t think I’m adequately prepared (in my head at least) for how difficult this afternoon could be.