Sometimes the place is the same, but your being there isn't.
It was strange today to be back on the campus of the uni where I spent so much time with my then girlfriend and fiancée (now wife), and finished the last part of my degree.
Last time I was here, it was as a student. Now, a number of years later, I was lugging around company literature and suddenly a lot more attendant to the landscape than ever before.
Memories were stirred walking past the lecture theatres and the library and the lawn outside the library, shaded by London plane trees (Cara's favourite place on campus).
There was still learning to be done - about the landscapes - but this time I was here on business. There were still the students dawdling, running, chatting, sipping coffee. There was still the carpark full of 'P' plates.
Very little about the place has changed. But I have. And yet it was an appropriate place to be - it was in part the education I was given that has prompted me to change and grow.
How could I ever return to the halls of learning - whether to attend lectures or to sell - and not have been changed through what was given me here and in other places?
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