Happiness is a girl called Kate...

... well that's how I feel, anyway.

Just a few days to go until our wedding and things are being to take on a slightly surreal tinge, as if our life for the next few days was being scripted by Herman Hesse. Things just seem to float along and we find ourselves having strange encounters with the past and the future - like Kate reading a book about a broadcaster who quit her job to go travelling around Europe with her husband, me finding a bin bag of old toys in my parents attic, or the strange emptiness of our flat without all or stuff in it and its echo of last August when we first moved in. We've walked through building sites to find a mini-club/cinema hidden away like Aladdin's cave, or gone accidentally off-roading in Sheena (who held up very well), and all the while we know full well these strange experiences will soon pale in comparison to the amazing adventure we are about to embark on.

We've booked our ferry from Poole to Cherbourg at 8am on April 2nd. We're going to kick around Brittany for a few days before catching Crippled Black Phoenix in Nantes on the 7th, where we are going to stay with a total stranger called Gina who we made contact with through Global Freeloaders. Then it's on to Kate's mother's near Cahors via La Rochelle. After that Europe (and beyond?) is our destination, going as far as Sheena will carry us. The future is one of strange vistas, new cities, new sights, new smells, fresh tastes, problems, languages, music, barriers, friendships, and the uncanny familiarity of places and situations that are at once both brand new and so old. It's a crazy uncertain, future where nothing is certain for me.

Except Kate. Always Kate.