Following Your Nose

‘Be Prepared’ is the boy scouts motto. I have no affinity with this motto when it comes to navigation and I have  managed to come the last 1000km from Serbia using only a 1:1200,000 scale map and compass.

Most places and signs use the Cyrillic alphabet which communicates nothing useful to me, I can’t speak or understand any of the language and therefore asking for directions is near impossible.

The more I think about the motto ‘Be Prepared’ the more I think I have become completely reckless. If I was called a ‘Gypsy’ for living hand to mouth I might be tempted to agree.  I never know where I am going to stay, what or where I am going to eat, time has become obsolete and instead replaced by the simple necessity of daylight.

I am an English man. I am supposed to know in advance the answers to all these questions and I don’t. More importantly I don’t really care that I don’t know because I know that I will work them when they need to be worked out. Perhaps this is not a sustainable or effective way of living in a modern and complicated world but for a short time I will savour the freedom.

“All Roads Lead Somewhere”

I think this is a quote. Or maybe it is “All Roads Lead to Rome.” I don’t know. Whatever the case I have used the philosophy a few times and the annoying fact is that very often roads go somewhere but unfortunately it is not always the place you want to go to. Secondly and more importantly once the road has gone to the place you don’t want it to go it quite often stops.