I love to travel, venture into the unknown. Two shelves of travel books represent my worldwide quest for understanding the world we live in a little more, questioning ‘knowledge’ which had hitherto been taken for granted, or learning and seeing something completely new. The well-thumbed pages of these books accompanied me as memories of five continents were formed.
My yearning to travel began in gentile Lytham St. Annes. As Uncle Frank and Auntie Irene’s slide projector threw images onto the sitting room wall of Austrian fountains playing beneath cascades of baroque steps. I resolved that I would holiday abroad when I was grown up. I did not have to wait that long. Fortunately my mother also had the travel bug. She had once holidayed in Interlaken with the afore mentioned Irene, and she was intent on returning to Switzerland. So when I was ten we flew to Basel and then took a train to Lugano. As we made our way around Italian speaking Ticino I became obsessed with all things Swiss, collecting chocolate bar wrappers and till receipts. This all-consuming passion and commitment was usually only reserved for Davy Jones of the Monkees. I remember my mother was rather disappointed with the Coca Cola. She remembered sipping a glass near the summit of Mont Blanc on her previous visit, but it was not quite as she remembered it. I suspect there had been a major change in the recipe during the intervening years.
26 years old, Irene and Edna first and second on the left, on their first holiday abroad. 1952.
Looking back our arrival in the Alps was remarkable as the last 15 miles of the 260 mile journey to Gatwick airport was made via Reigate General Hospital in an ambulance, while our Triumph Herald was towed to a garage where it took several months to repair. My father, never seen without cap and glasses, had to spend the early days of his first excursion outside Britain with limited vision until the local opticians were able to provide a new pair of spectacles. I can imagine that was a big dent in the holiday budget. His blurry vision did not seem to dampen his mood, maybe he was just grateful he had managed to react quickly and save his family from obliteration. The taxi driver who hit us, overtaking on a narrow road, was later charged with dangerous driving. Looking back we were lucky to get to Switzerland at all, but even as the hours ticked away at the hospital my mother never once considered that we might not be boarding the Swissair flight to Basel.
For some reason, perhaps to avoid travelling the length of England to an airport, our next holiday was a package to Lloret de Mar from Ringway, still under Franco’s fascist rule at the time. This was not considered a great success, I think, and my mother was soon organising a more challenging itinerary to yet another dictatorship, Caetano’s poverty-stricken Portugal. The purpose of most of our fellow holidaymakers in Figueira da Foz was to visit the shrine at Fatima. Maybe the name of the tour company Pilgrim Travel might have been a clue. Despite the inclement weather during the first week, the terrorist bomb in the harbour and the stink of the meat market I had the travel bug by the time we got back.
Paddling in the Atlantic. Figueira da Foz. c1970.
I am not going to find my favourite book amongst the travelogues but certainly these books trigger memories of extraordinary experiences: prayer flags flying over the stupas in the Himalayan Buddhist state of Bhutan; animist shrines and rock tombs in rural Dogon country, Mali; pondering the similarities between the conquistadors, Spanish Inquisition and bloodthirsty Aztecs while in a church in Mexico City. All these recollections and more permeate my imagination and ultimately my writing.
Often the biggest surprises have been found where they are least expected. This often happens in The States. In the John Paul Getty Museum I overheard an American asking if the likenesses on the thousands years-old Roman-Egyptian funeral masks were so good -though how would he know?- because they had been taken from photographs. In Colorado I encountered men wearing big Stetsons. ‘Are they being serious?’ I asked my travelling companion, as I wondered if the men were on their way to some mad hatters stag party. For some reason I had thought only television characters in Dallas actually dressed like that. Conversely my media-induced perception that historic Native Americans only lived in tee-pees was disproved by the awesome cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verde in New Mexico.
The Taj Mahal was so familiar, and so exactly as I imagined it, that I was unmoved. I felt I had already been there a hundred times. Unexpectedly arriving in Villahermosa in Western Mexico, to avoid a Zapatista uprising, I took an unscheduled tour of the previously unheard of, La Vente. The local guide stood before a large stone head, its African features carved several hundred years before Christ, and dismissively said the likeness was of a slave, ‘of course’. The tour group silently compared their knowledge of transatlantic history and the evidence before them. Many scholars claim the Olmec statues have no connection with Africa. I just don’t believe them.
In Peru my two companions from Surrey, decided to educate me on the dietary habits of Manchester. They were insistent that the fish and chip shops in Manchester sold deep-fried Mars bars, and were well known for this. I explained that actually it was Glasgow that I thought had the dubious honour of being famous for this delicacy. They could not be persuaded. As our small plane accelerated down the runway at Nazca I finally agreed. ‘Yes, yes Manchester is known for its deep-fried Mars Bars,’ fearing that any further argument would interrupt my enjoyment of the mysterious Nazca lines which were about to unfold before me. I still wonder at their insistence that this incorrect fact is true. I guess it must have been crucial to the establishment of their cultural superiority.
But usually it is the local people, not the tourists who are memorable. Near the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia I met Mermer who was able to talk with great authority about all the Arsenal players who had ever transferred to Manchester City. If there is an Ethiopian Mastermind he would surely win with his specialist knowledge of Arsenal Football Club. I hope he achieves his ambition to be an engineer.
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