Today Dol and I ventured from Sheffield to Aberdeen with the red Astra in our grand car handing over ritual. It was an enjoyable and at the same time a really painful journey. Two of the R & Rs that we stopped at were the same R & Rs that Mom, Dad, Cha and myself stopped at during our winter road trip in 2006. It was really hard when I pictured Dad on the dining table with us, eating fish and chips, mulling over the mat sallehs around us, over how nice the drive (and the driver of course!) was, over how we should go to the Lake district for our next road trip, over how he himself used to travel around UK, and many other things. I remember that Dad never failed to tell us the story of him taking the Freedom of Scotland* offer and how he, armed with only an open rail ticket and a backpack (maybe not, feel free to rectify) traversed through the Highlands from Stirling to Loch Ness and many other places. What was so interesting was the same twinkle in his eyes, the same sheer excitement he showed every single time he tells us that story of his. He would lean over closer to us, and as if we have never heard the story before, begin his tale. I hate it that I am never going to see that twinkle in his eyes again.
*Freedom of Scotland, as my memory serves me, was a promotion to students to encourage them to travel around Scotland, where upon paying an affordable fee, they are given an open rail ticket that allowed them to travel on any rail service around Scotland for a week. I believe Dad went for this one with his colleague arwah Khalid.
