Travel: places make it. And people even more

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. I suppose it does that because it exposes you to different experiences. And to different people.

For instance, my team was recently asked to send someone to work in India. That’s not our territory. But we were happy to help and one of my colleagues went. It was a week of hard work but he found it rewarding. On his return, he remarked ‘it’s the first time I’ve taken a three-and-a-half hour flight and left the plane in the same country I took off from.’

Obviously, there are other places where it can happen. Russia. China. The United States where, even without including Alaska or Hawaii, you can get even longer flights: for instance, 6 hours 35 minutes from Miami to Seattle.

But in our little countries of Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, it’s unlikely. Though for a moment I thought it had happened a while back. I’d caught a plane home from Spain. As we landed, a cabin attendant welcomed us ‘to Madrid’.

But then she was Spanish and perhaps anxious to get home, which may have caused the slip. Flying two and a half hours from Madrid only to find ourselves back there would have been a little surprising. Though the French air traffic controllers were doing their best, by indulging in their traditional pastime around major holidays, of going on strike.

That trip wasn’t only significant for its geographical aspects. It was also a fine example of travel bringing me into contact with other people. Two of them, in this instance. On the train home from the airport.

The first was Sandeep. It was 10:00 at night and he’d been working since 8:00 that morning, though he was clearly using the word ‘work’ in a loose sense. He was obviously, as he later confirmed, in a well-lubricated state. Indeed, he was carrying a wine bottle only half full, and a couple of plastic glasses, one of which contained part of the other half.

‘Are you taking this train to Bedford?’ he asked me.

It struck me as an odd formulation of the question. But I had a straightforward answer, so I gave it.

‘No,’ I said, ‘to Luton.’

He had a brief moment of anxiety before asking the obvious follow-up.

‘But does the train go to Bedford?’

‘I hope so,’ I told him helpfully, ‘or I’m on the wrong train.’

That answer seemed to satisfy him because he sank onto a chair across the aisle from me.

‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘I’m a bit pissed and I couldn’t work out which train I needed to take. Glass of wine?’

I managed to resist the temptation of warm white wine out of a plastic glass and we got into conversation. Which meant that he talked to me – or at me – while I nodded at appropriate points. I even tried to say the odd word to encourage him, but he needed no encouragement and talked right through any remarks of mine.

The second person was Ryan. At first he walked up and down the carriage several times, I assume to see if he could find any congenial company, and eventually decided that there was nothing better on offer than us.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this sounds like a good on-going conversation.’

Clearly, he had the same notion as Sandeep of what constituted a conversation.

‘Mind if I join you?’ he went on, sitting down without waiting for a response, and picking up Sandeep’s wine bottle which he examined critically. He didn’t seem to share my reticence over absorbing its contents, so went on without pausing to another question, ‘mind if I have a drop of your wine?’

Sandeep clearly felt he was not being allowed to play his role of host as fully as he liked, so rather than sitting back and letting Ryan help himself, he poured him a generous plastic glass full. A clearly hospitable man, I decided, since he had presumably only brought the second plastic glass to entertain such guests as Ryan.

‘Good Lord! Not that much!’ said Ryan, but he raised his glass to our health, accompanying the gesture with a beaming smile, so I suspect he wasn’t as unhappy about the quantity as his words suggested.

‘I’m a bit pissed,’ he added, rather unnecessarily.

Travel companions: Ryan (left) and Sandeep

At this point, Sandeep managed to regain control of proceedings. He regaled us all the way to St Alban’s, where Ryan left, with a convoluted tale of how he’d forgotten his phone in a tube train the night before. I won’t bore you with the details, but just cut to the finish: he’d left it next to a colleague who had, fortunately, spotted it and brought it back for him the following day, even though he was officially on leave and the round trip took him three hours. What I’ve told you in less than a sentence, Sandeep managed to make last the full twenty-five minutes to St Alban’s.

After Ryan left, Sandeep decided to tell me a little about himself. He’d spent five years as a software developer on contracts, earning £580 a day.

‘Work it out,’ he said.

I had. He’d been making nearly £12,000 a month. As much in two months as the median annual income of British employees. But then he’d decided that he’d had enough of the existence and had taken a job as an employee again, cutting his earnings by two-thirds. He’d recently been promoted to lead a team, and was finding the stress difficult to handle. Could it be the team that had taken him drinking, what with Christmas so close? And the stress that had him hitting the bottle so hard?

But there was an issue that was bothering me. He was clearly of Indian extraction and drinking. Since I’m a complete stranger to tact, I asked him, ‘You’re not a Muslim, are you?’

‘No,’ he said, and then with a little pride, ‘I’m a Sikh.’

He explained that he’d used his years on high earnings to buy property.

‘Three houses and an off-licence,’ he told me. ‘The off-licence is for my Dad. He’s retired but he’s a shopkeeper at heart – he was one for years and he hates not having a shop to look after. So now he runs the offie.’

And the other three houses? Rented, naturally. It’s something that quite a few members of the Indian community seem to do: get into property quickly. A smart move. I don’t know what may happen post-Brexit, but housing does seem to be an excellent investment, one that holds its value far better than most.

‘My Dad owns nineteen houses,’ Sandeep added. Leaving me wondering why I hadn’t bought a couple more when I’d had a chance. Too late now, alas.

Interesting, anyway. As curious as long flights that leave you in the same country. A conversation that opened my eyes to other ways of doing things, and therefore broadened my mind.

Besides, he was likeable, Sandeep. Fun to be with. I’ll raise a glass to him over the holidays. One actually made of glass. And the white wine in it will be chilled.

The memory of an entertaining encounter will make it taste all the better.

Step by step towards the exit

Slowly the ties to what I’m beginning increasingly to think of as ‘the old country’ are being loosened.

It’s a slow-motion version of the existence of any immigrant. It’s not out of solidarity with immigrants that I’m doing it, though God knows in today's world they need every act of solidarity they can get, but I am going through the same process as other immigrants. Gradually, I'm leaving the country of my passport for another.

We haven’t actually left the UK yet. Our main home is still in Luton. More important still, so’s our cat. What we’re engaged in is a trial, for the month of September, of life in the place we feel we should move to, Valencia. That involves checking out what it’s like to travel from there, since my job involves being somewhere else quite a lot of the time.

That’s what loosens the ties to Britain. Travelling between third countries, without passing through Britain, delivers a useful object lesson: the UK is not the indispensable nation we Brits, even among us anti-Brexiters, sometimes think it is. Most of the world can live just fine without it.

My first trip involved a flight directly from Valencia. It went smoothly. That encouraged me for the next, rather more complex because it involved travelling to Madrid and catching a plane from there.

Because I wasn’t too sure of how each stage would go, I decided to take an early train – 8:00 am which, on a Sunday morning, feels like the crack of dawn. I’m glad I did, because it left with half an hour’s delay. I assumed it would catch up some of that on the trip but, on the contrary, it added significantly to it. Nearly doubling it, in fact, and that ‘nearly’ is crucial: an hour’s delay would have meant a partial refund. 29 minutes means no refund at all.

It was on arrival at Madrid that I received the first real shock of the journey. Heading quietly towards the exit I eventually found a door with a sign over it reading ‘Exit to city of Barcelona’.

Exit to the city of Barcelona

I have to confess that my first reaction was one of sheer terror. Had I somehow managed to get on the wrong train? It made no sense. As far as I know, there’s no high-speed railway connection between Valencia and Barcelona. Besides, hadn’t I heard the announcements and seen the information displays confirming that we were heading for Madrid?

The explanation was simple. It was bound to be. The exit I was taking led onto a street called ‘Ciudad de Barcelona’. But – well, eight o’clock on a Sunday is a tough time to be at work. I wasn’t entirely conscious, I think, which is why the sign nearly precipitated a heart attack.

At least, my early start meant the hour’s delay had no serious effect. On the contrary, it made it possible to have a coffee and another glorious fresh orange juice (one of the delights of being in Spain) with my charming daughter-out-law for nearly the last time: I’m unlikely to see her more than once more before she becomes my (equally charming) daughter-in-law, an event planned to happen in less than two weeks’ time.

A second daughter-in-law? An event to be celebrated. As we shall, in proper style, in the hills near Madrid, the weekend after next. In the meantime, conversation, coffee and orange juice were a more than adequate interim pleasure.

And getting to the airport was no problem. Proving again that living in Valencia won’t reduce my capacity to do my work. Further loosening my ties to the Brexit state I barely recognise any longer as the nation I’ve always thought of as my own. 

Like any migrant.

Luci’s diary: finding out how much fun travel can be

Luci’s Diary. She’s discovered the delights of travel. And the joy of the car – which takes you somewhere great whatever direction it’s travelling. 

Late May 2015

Travel – wow – it’s just great!

Now, I didn’t always like the car. Got to admit that. My number 2 human even had to clean up a bit of – well, how should I put it – regurgitated material on one of my early trips. But I soon learned to enjoy it. 

The thing is that it takes you to nice places.

The humans find me a bit odd, because I’m always so keen to jump into the car, at the end of a walk as much as when we set out for one. But, hey, it makes sense. I like the places we go to walk, and I like home. So obviously I like going either way. And because the car always takes me walking or home, I like the car.

On the other hand, you can get too much of it. We had hour after hour the other day. By the end, frankly, I was getting a bit fed up. But then we turned up in this most fantastic place. It’s in Yorkshire, and I’ve decided that Yorkshire is God’s own County. I’ve decided that because it sounds good, even though I don’t know just what a County is, let alone God. Still, there’s nothing you can say about Yorkshire that I’d think was too nice.

First of all, you can walk, and walk, and walk. We stayed in a place called Malham. There’s grass all over the place. With loads of new things for me to get to know – sheep, for instance, and rabbits – and lots of crows to chase. Wonderful.

And there’s lots of water. 

Water – such fun when it behaves and stays still.

Well, of course I already knew about water. I’d seen it in my bowl, where it’s useful but a bit dull. Then you get it in other places where it isn’t dull at all, but nasty and tricksy. Streams, for instance. The water never stops moving. It tugs at you. It swirls at you. You can’t trust it at all.

Well, near Malham’s there’s this great place. It’s called the Tarn. That’s a patch of water that behaves itself like it should: it sits still. So you can go in and jump about and have fun. And, boy, it’s fun. What a blast.

And back in Malham itself, there are other great places. Pubs, for instance. Where they actually want dogs to come in. Fantastic. There was a character in one of them who decided that what he really, really wanted to do was share his meal with me. He gave me half his hamburger. See what I mean? God’s own county.

Now that’s what I call a friend

We had such a good time in Malham that I was really happy to get back into the car. That surprised the humans again – “if you like this place so much, how come you’re happy to go somewhere else?” They’re a bit slow sometimes.

Look, the car took me somewhere I really liked. So it was obviously going to take me somewhere else I’d really like. What’s so hard to understand?

And I was right! We went to Scotland, and there was a small human in the place we stayed. Wow. I really like the small ones. And this one kept trying to train me, which meant doing things like sitting down or coming over to her. Those were things I wanted to do anyway, but training means you get treats for doing them. Fantastic. It was wonderful getting her to do what I wanted.

But there was more water. Another kind. So big. Salty too – no fun to drink. And, wow, does it move. Worse than a stream. It has these waves, right, and they break on you. You might be sniffing at the water, and one of them sneaks up and makes this great, cracking noise right over your head before drenching you.

And that isn’t the worst of it. It chases you up the beach! Appalling.

Still, we had fun all the same. A good trip. Really liked the people. Really liked the food. Really liked the places. Why, to be honest, I even quite enjoyed the water, though it was a bit scary at times.

And then: joy! We got back into the car. And we went home! Magical. Amazing. 

The car’s just fantastic.