Dear mid-life wanderer,
Please cast your mind back to 1974. It was a watershed year for spangly swingin’ Swedes Abba and a ruinous two fingers up for that jowly trickster Nixon. Mustard was the new avocado, since black hadn’t been invented yet. If you weren’t born, and/or you’re middle-class Anglo, you didn’t miss much. On the whole, 1974 will forever languish at the bottom of the beige shoulder-bag we call ‘the mid-‘70s’.
It would have been a complete waste of wall calendar, except that it was also the year my art-school-addled olds embarked on a harebrained circumnavigation of the world, much of it in an orange VW pop-top campervan, God-help-us. Their witless plan included my sibling and me – two bickering blonde poppets who seized every opportunity to derail Ma and Pa’s ambitious Grand Tour and reroute it through the seventh circle of Hell. Think Locked Up Abroad, with the Menendez Sisters.
For designated driver Dad, it must have been a teeth-grinding slog through a million are-we-there-yets, shameless Macca-for-museums bribery scandals and baguettes-at-dawn sibling bashery. Mum wore a lot of berets and recorded our jolly outing in a diary she still quotes from when the annual family slide-night palls. “On this day in 1974, ‘the girls promised the officers they would never do it again,’” or “The trauma nurses were very nice,” etc, etc. Dad was forced to shave his beard-nest at Moscow airport. My sister nearly drowned in Sweden. It cost half a pence to spend a penny in ye olde London towne.
Despite so few universally acknowledged plus points, 1974 gifted me with a LAG-bag of account-draining obsessions that I carry onboard to this day – and not just for the Instagram pics. Almost honestly, I can’t think of anything better to do than travel and eat at the same time.
So it thrills me to my flight socks when this time of year cruises into town. Oh, good old Khmer New Year, eh? Followed by good old May Day Holiday, majestic King’s Birthday, terrific Royal Ploughing weekend or sacred ancient lying-in-a-hammock-somewhere-idyllic fortnight. If you’re canny you can sort a month’s break and no one will notice, since CharmingVille is rolling with tumbleweeds and the only people around are cat burglars and sun-stunned tourists who forgot to check their Thorn Tree.
And it doesn’t really matter where the road takes me, unless it’s the ‘road’ to Rattanakiri. Just the going is as good as getting there, and going by plane has that extra frisson. I relish the weeks preparing for take-off, especially the Sunday afternoons decanting big liquids into small plastics – tiny bottles of conditioner are catnip to me. At the drop of a Zantac I’m off to De la Gare with a shopping list as long as a Koh Rong weekend: I won’t passenge without a Ziploc of Stilnox and earplugs nestled next to my moist towelettes. On the big day, I pause to bag-sit – Russian-style – and recite ‘passport, tickets, money, passport, tickets, money’ in a soothing mental rosary. I routinely arrive at Pochetong three, four, five hours early, which means I can spend a good hour or so using Burger King’s free wifi to gloat on Facebook. Did you know you can pretend you’re posting from the actual control tower? And my phone is sick with travel apps. Fuck Candy Crush. Give me the Air Asia flight schedule every time.
Once I’ve tsked the pushy tour guides line-jumping with a fist-load of Chinese passports at check-in, it’s off upstairs to sigh loudly while booze-reeking, inappropriately dressed bogans argue not to have their nunchucks confiscated. On board, after I’ve wet-tissued the nose grease off the window, viciously bagsed the armrest, and silently blessed the vital four millimetres of fabric between my skin and that of my fragrant neighbour, I settle in for the ride. If I’m not comatose on prescription sleep aids, I look to airline food – that culinary pariah – to provide guilty distraction in the flatulent hours aloft. Is that a black olive or a grape? Will they know if I take the baby salt and pepper shakers? Dinner roll: sweet or not?
Happily for me, the Hubster enjoys tramping, glamping, touring and trekking as much as I do. Well maybe not the trekking part – he’s happy to stay in the hut and mind the duty-free with those nice Norwegian backpackers while I take countless artsy photos in the ‘Charming Mountaintop Village’ genre: still-life pot on rustic brazier, old bloke on donkey groaning with shallots, ruddy cheeked tot. But still.
Unusually – and just in case you cat burglars can read – this holiday season he’s staycationing at our connubial HQ to Bunster-sit and play festive but unfathomable crack-your-neighbour’s-knee-with-stones games while drinking his weight in ABC. Meanwhile I’ve rolled up my elasticated eating pants, stuffed my wheelie with woollens and stocked up on hypnotics for a week with sis and the folks. 1974, you crazy tripper, here I come.