If you want to watch the full "Wind in the Willows" movie, this timeless
tale of friendship between Rat, Mole, Badger and Toad, click here.
A neighbour keeps telling me, "We are motorcycle-riding again tomorrow, going to follow Runnyford Road to Mogo, then explore some dirt roads around Moruya" or "We had a great day. Took the Kings Highway to Braidwood, then to Araluen. Had a nice meal and chat with friends at the hotel before riding home via the gravel section of the Araluen Road to Moruya."
It's all so reminiscent of when I was still mobile and motivated and would be off once again, not just down Runnyford Road but down the Yellow Brick Road to a new life on a new job in a new country. Until a few years ago, I would still receive visitors to "Riverbend" who had, like me in the past, lived the expatriate life overseas, and who were, unlike me, still living the expatriate life overseas. How I always envied them!
Did my Austrian friend envy me when I left Townsville again for New Guinea and he returned to his job with the TOWNSVILLE BULLETIN where he had worked as a papercutter for the past thirty years? And what about that nice man I met during a time-and-motion study I was commissioned to do in a factory? He stood at a huge metal press which, as he said with barely disguised pride, he had operated for the past twenty years. Are they not the real heroes instead of the likes of me who jump onto a plane at the first onset of ennui (look it up, Des!)
Perhaps my Austrian friend also felt a sense of pride as he opened his free copy of the TOWNSVILLE BULLETIN in the morning, knowing that he had played a part in its making, whereas I have been part of so many things in so many jobs that I don't know which I ought to take pride in.
All I know is that the feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement (which is what ennui is, Des!) has never left me, and listening to "The Open Road" made it worse.
