SAM Return to Earth
Sam & Kat return to normal, sort of.
SAM JOHNSON
The pit of my stomach tells me that we’re not meant to be in London yet. We’re over four months early for our return to home soil and after spending so much time preparing myself to travel for 10 months it feels odd to be home.
The familiarity of being back on a tube that I’ve ridden almost everyday for a decade is too much for my mind to fully comprehend after six months out of the country. Unsurprisingly travelling from the other side of the world is exhausting, however there’s still things we need to do before we can go back into quarantine part 2.
The mood of London soon becomes apparent as we arrange to pick up a set of keys. The car containing someone we know slows to a crawl and an envelope is thrown out of the car window at Kat whilst the car then drives off to the sound of “sorry”.
I can understand why people are afraid to come in direct contact with us as it’s basically impossible to social distance on a plane. But it still feels like overkill.
Being treated as infected is a theme that continues. Our backpacks highlight our foreign credentials and get us into trouble when the concierge of the flat we are staying in tries to prevent us from entering the building. Kat expertly explains our situation and negotiates our entry. I’m exceptionally grateful for this as I don’t think I could have had the conversation with out sarcastically telling him we’ve come from a country that in its entirety has less cases than North London.
On one side it feels pretty shitty to go against someone who’s trying to implement orders from above but at the same time we have to go somewhere.
The paranoia and fear of the afternoon is infectious (pardon the pun) and after a panicked supermarket shop we hope our drained brains have managed to remember everything we might need for the week ahead. We’ve been traveling for 34 hours as we lock the door for the first eight days of quarantine.
As the jet lag kicks in I try and think if we have received a more hostile welcome to any country we’ve entered, either during or before the outbreak. Regrettably I can’t think of any. Just a shame it’s my own country.
Still we’re in and we’re obtained both Australia and British Cadbury’s to carry out the all important taste test and find out which hemisphere makes the better dairy milk.
Images owned by Sam Johnson
