There are good times and bad times to be away from home; meeting new people, discovering beautiful landscapes, experiencing new, unfamiliar things… these are the key. Birthdays, Christmas, funerals, getting hit by a bus… always a good time to be with loved ones. Sometimes everything, well almost everything, seems to fall at once. That’s how I’d describe turning 30. I spent the day working, not a big deal, but isolated in the middle of a week-long trip with a group of international landslide experts. For them the trip was “50% culture, 50% work”, for me it was 100% free - not a bad mix. But for a birthday there wasn’t really anyone round, just a few colleagues, thirty-odd strangers, txt messages, and no net. A call from Mum at 2am let me know Nanna had passed
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