As a title, "Nothing stays the same" must strike you as pretty much here we go again, Tim stating the bleeding obvious. Change in places we have been to before and are revisiting can be welcome or not. Some places exist as continual reinventions of themselves, I am thinking especially of Singapore and Hong Kong. Others change slightly here and there, historic cities in Europe are like this, where the mediaeval core sits in uncomfortable alliance with modern needs, as in London.
Sometimes the changes are welcome, and others it is an erosion of the individuality of a district or community of city into anywhere else in the world. At the hotel Laing and I stayed at Saigon there was Gucci shop or some such name, and splattered all over the place were adverts for a new Gucci store opening not that far from where we were staying. If anybody is going to tell me the locals are going to support two Gucci shops within spitting distance of each other I will call him a fool or a liar. Saigon doesn't need Gucci stores everywhere, nor does any other Far Eastern City. Like our own sleepy home towns, we need to quirky individual stores, like a cobblers, or a laundry, you get the picture.
The big change for me is I am enjoying myself on a holiday where once I would have had Laing at my side and we would have chatted about the experience and pointed out things to each other or seen something and suggest it could be photographed as it would have been a typical subject for the other. We would have suggested to each other where to go and what to do. Not having somebody next to you who knows you well and having to look out for oneself is hard, I am not going to pretend otherwise, but you know, if you accept the fact that there will be change, then you have won half the battle.
Equally, we know that as sure as we are born the other end of the thread means we will die, and none of us knows how long that thread is going to be. Only the Fates who spin, allot the length and the cutter of the thread know how long we have, and they never tell. I cannot speak for those who know they are going to die, Laing never spoke to me of it or about it. I know he avoided telling me things I needed to know as this was an admittance he was having to let go and accept the inevitable.
Even Hell will freeze over some time, we know it will. When that will be I don't know, but when it does, what a day that will be! All those changes we said that would only happen when Hell freezes over! It doesn't bear thinking about. Armageddon will be a walk in the park in comparison!
Tim
P.S. My original post got lost somehow and I worked it from a draft I had on the computer. If the original turns up, I will gladly delete this as I am sure my reworking was brilliant.
