Anne Atkins - 04/11/2026

Available for over a year

I always assumed Homer was exaggerating. How could anyone dawdle for another ten years, after a decade at war? As so often, it transpires fact is stranger. Karl Bushby, who challenged himself to traverse the world without transport, has been a wanderer for twenty-eight summers: walking – occasionally swimming – for over half that time. Like Odysseus, he has endured challenges and setbacks, captivity and danger. Unlike Odysseus, Bushby came home, not anonymous and unrecognised but to a hero’s welcome and cheering crowds. Nostalgia, or longing for home, is widespread. War inflicts terrible exile: my family and I have become friends with many Ukrainians; yearning for home but dreading it, desperately helping left-behind relatives to leave a land they love. It’s also a theme of faith. Even earlier than Odysseus, the Hebrews’ forty years in the wilderness no longer seems so far-fetched. By the waters of Babylon we wept, mourned a much later generation in captivity, hanging our harps on the willows. How can we the Lord’s song sing in a strange land? Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, Jesus said. Several of His most prominent followers died displaced. An older friend of ours, long gone, was deprived of a beloved vicarage, so I commiserated. Or tried to. But “we’re only pilgrims passing through,” she said lightly. “It was never our ultimate home.” I was amazed, impressed by her faith. She and her husband are now where she always said they belonged. Less than a fortnight ago we lost a member of our family, totally unexpected and a great shock. He too was a much loved member of the clergy and last week many hundreds filled a cathedral to express their and our sorrow. I confess, I felt resentful. Why couldn’t God let him grow old with the rest of us? And yet who would want a longer Odyssey? O, let him passe, said Kent of his much-loved King Lear. He hates him That would upon the wracke of this tough world Stretch him out longer. And despite our tears, there was deep and real jubilation that day. The rest of us have to plod on. Our brother is home at last. “The only thing worse than a man who can’t fulfil his dreams,” said Karl Bushby, is a man who has. But what can be better than to go home?