Sic transit, sick of transit.

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," Robert Louis Stevenson. Travel's on my mind. I think there's a whole philosophical digression in the RLS quote, but not mine, not today. I want to arrive, I don't much mind the travel, what I don't want to do is leave. It's not a moment either, it's the whole afternoon, the drive to the airport and then the little red car pulling away with me standing outside departures. I don't like the departures bit of Vancouver airport anywhere near as much as I like arrivals.
One time when I was leaving, Showcase had a 'Kath and Kim' marathon. I adore this Aussie comedy and watching it all day long eased the gloom, but halfway through the second series I had to go. Irritatingly, they were at the same point in showing the second series in the UK when I had to leave to come here.

But it's not just leaving, it's the whole deal, it's transition that is so hard. Every morning while doing my 'hexercises' (exercise plus spells) I watch the W network and they show a lot of British improvement programmes. This morning, Kim and Aggie (How Clean is your House?) dealt with a Brit called Ting Wong and his disgusting filth. Kim took a saucepan caked in burnt on crap, put cola in it, heated it and while we watched the saucepan became gleaming. She put a few drops of fabric conditioner into water which she used to clean his telly and reduce static. She rubbed baking soda into his carpet. He may not have known these tips, but why the fuck couldn't he clean up his own crap? The place was stinking as they went in, takeaway food on the carpet, grease, grime, junk, garbage in every space. He's just one in the series. Kim and Aggie have cleaned the USA, they've cleaned Britain. I've only ever once seen an episode where the recipients of Aggie's lab sampling and Kim's cleaning dominatrix approach didn't hail them as saviours. The ladies go back after two weeks and the former grunge monsters are born again home keepers. It's that first step that is the hardest, they never know where to start to make that transition.

Another show has an even harder transition, that towards healthy eating. 'You are What you eat' has a thin bullying woman who deprives families of their junk food and makes them exercise.
Over eight weeks the families scowl, whine, whinge, swear and stamp their feet while Gillian holds the line. By the end they have lost weight, sleep better, poo better, have less wind and their depression is lifted. But anyone who has ever started a diet knows how tough that one is.
This show works because the whole family makes the transition together, when Jamie Oliver tried to change the nation's school dinners, he was fighting the parents. He prevailed through sheer hard work and an ability to think strategically, and the London Borough of Greenwich which ran this pilot reported a massive reduction in the use of medication for asthma and other allergies and a rise in pupil concentration in the afternoon and in measurable pupil achievement.

I like to think of bad times as extended transitions - often they are just that - and I tell myself that DH Lawrence once said, 'This too will pass,' yes it will, one way or another, it will pass. Sometimes that means improvement, sometimes it means getting used to the changed state and sometimes it means just riding the wave and letting it take you where it will.