Dig beneath red-eyed platitudes about travel broadening the mind and you'll find voyagers dying to get back home, writes Quentin Fottrell
THE NEWS that Dave Freeman, co-author of 100 Things To Do Before You Die, died after falling and hitting his head at his home in California at the age of 47, was poured over by pop philosophers seeking hidden meaning. He wasn't land-diving in the South Pacific with nothing but vines tied around his ankles, bull-running in Pamplona, at the Pushkar Camel Fair in India, or attending the Oscars or checking out the fillies at Royal Asco - all activities listed in the book he co-authored.
The media found this ironic, like the song about winning the lottery and dying the next day, but I think they just saw a cheesy headline. One paper wrote: "Author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die is killed in fall - and he only managed to achieve half his list!" It makes me feel better for being a lazy lump, sitting at home watching The Tudors when I should be white-water rafting on the Amazon like some abbed guy from a Guinness ad. Or anywhere that is not Disneyland Paris.
My late grandmother never travelled abroad. She didn't have a burning desire to go to see the Empire State Building or break bread with pygmies in Papua New Guinea. Of course, I would have liked her to see a glittering metropolis like Manhattan up close, but she never bought into the idea that you had to take a voodoo pilgrimage in Haiti to be a kind, fully evolved or spiritually fulfilled human being. She was good enough and happy enough the way she was.
I have a love/hate relationship with holidays. I'm only going on mine now. It may stem from a school trip to Wales by ferry, which I was not allowed go on. To stop my whinging, my mother jokingly told me, "The drunkards would throw you overboard!" I believed her. The next day I warned my classmates, "The drunkards will throw you overboard!" Despite the ridicule, it instilled in me the belief that there's no place like home and a more cautious attitude to adventure holidays.
It's nice to go back to the same caravan in Courtown year-after-year or ramshackle cottage in west Cork to revisit memories and make new ones. You don't get that in a beach hut on Koh Phanang, where I went a few years ago only to get so bored after two days that I took a plane out of there. Plus, holidays have become yet another way of making your next-door neighbours feel inadequate. "You went to Kilmuckridge? How darling. Is that the Kilmuckridge in St Barts?"
Holidays hold too many expectations. We expect to be rewarded for working hard during the year with two weeks of unbridled, uninterrupted happiness. Then Hurricane Gustav comes along or a war breaks out. Jet planes also gave us the impossible expectation to see every inch of the globe, but on long-haul trips the jet lag during the first 24 hours is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Nightmare on Elm Street I, II, III and IV. Whatever you do . . . don't fall asleep!
Trips of a lifetime are too much pressure. Inevitably, someone will say, "You went to Granada and only saw the Alhambra from the top of a tourist bus?" Bill Cullen has decided to take the "double-decker bus at the Alhambra" option: he recently signed up with Virgin Galactic to go into space and see the world from up there. That gave another gem of a headline: "Apprentice boss Bill ready to be fired . . . into space!" It sure beats visiting every crime-filled nook and litter-filled cranny.
Schadenfreude is not a town in Austria. I can't resist reading those stories about "Stranded holidaymakers". Holiday brochures lead the jet set to believe there is a place where there isn't any trouble. As those who booked holidays with Zoom and Great Escapes discovered, you can't escape the world's problems by going on a package holiday. And sitting on your luggage in an airport with a long face doesn't evoke the same sympathy in me as Georgian refugees fleeing South Ossetia.
It's useful to see how other people live, but I'm not convinced that leaving a carbon footprint the size of a Yeti for a 10-day hike up Machu Picchu or a day-trip to Soweto slums broadens all minds. Living there for six months might. However, holidays do give us a greater understanding of the life we left behind. If only I could bring home the sense of peace I sometimes feel on the last day of my holiday. But shortly after I get home, I inevitably fall back into the same habits.
Enjoying your own home may also be preferable to a weekend in a country guesthouse. Himself and I recently stayed in one in Co Meath. The trick is to act like you live there and the other guests don't exist. We tried playing Scrabble. ("Unfattened is not a word!")
We sat in an outdoor jacuzzi as the invisible ones waited their turn, basked in seaweed baths like otters, and wandered from room to room, poking our heads through doors, all the time wondering what on earth to do next.