homecoming

on the things you didn't know you'd missed

There’s a Pret in Barcelona airport. A week of similar menus at similar restaurants clinging to the different seafronts of a clutch of Catalonian fishing villages and here we were, confronted with the familiarity of most central London high streets. It was an equally horrifying and comforting sight; a grimly consumerist whiff of home.

We were flying at lunch time and while M bought something from the faux-Italian place I couldn’t shake off the Pret. Off I went, drawn to the fridges I’ve bought from hundreds of times before, playing spot the difference with the usual things (egg sammiches) and the novel nods to regional specificity (Iberico ham! The revelation that what UK customers know as the mozzarella-tomato is here called the ‘caprese’!)

When we landed here a week before I clocked a little sign explaining that Barcelona airport was the ‘Most Enjoyable Airport in Europe’. Funny adjective; as if an airport was a place to do anything other than leave for somewhere else. But here I was, using my final minutes of my holiday, my final minutes of my time in Catalonia, perusing the same chain of sandwich shop that I used in the final minutes before I left Gatwick. Perhaps this was a form of enjoyment.

We touched down into temperatures 10 degrees cooler than we’d become accustomed to, and I sheltered the toddler from the rain with my jacket. England looked grey, everyone was underdressed. Something inside me clocked a shift I’d been waiting for.