Young at Heart is away......

....guess where?

Top tip: One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things......Henry Miller

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin'...........

There are few greater pleasures in life than sitting upstairs, at the front of the bus on a beautiful sun-beaming-down-bright-blue-day; St. Pancras illuminated in a golden Gothic glow, budding trees skimming past, blossom blowing a blur in the breeze.....well perhaps a few.....but not so many when your head, too, is filled with thoughts of holiday, as mine is.

A couple of weeks ago I began to complain bitterly that I would never again go on holiday because I didn’t have a boyfriend. And I didn’t want to go away on my own to walk up a mountain, or learn salsa, or do yoga, or go kayaking with other enthusiastically single-Billy—no-mates, or billet myself with good-friends-who-live-abroad and have to sing for my free-supper by bouncing their children on my knee while balancing my glass of rose on the corner of the table-full-of-couples.......and that boyfriends really only are for Christmas and holidays and that what I wanted to do was go to Argentina because I’d always wanted to go to South America and soon I’d be too old to travel anywhere and I’d never see Patagonia and I’d always wanted to go to Patagonia because it’s one of my favourite words and Buenos Aires always sounded so romantic and......then someone I was working with randomly mentioned she was going to Argentina for a week over Easter to visit a friend....

“How wonderful”, I said, “I wish I was going to Argentina.”

“Why don’t you come,” she said, “I’ll change my flight, stay for two weeks, we can go to Patagonia.”

“Because..... how much is it?”

“Here’s the number, call them and just book it, it’ll be great....”

So I did.

My travelling companion, an energetic 35 year old, built like Barbie but eats like a horse, with a possible thyroid-condition, is the bi-polar opposite of me in pretty much everyway: petite, blond and not so much glass-half-full as cup-runneth-over, everything is extended: hair, eye-lashes and heels......she was once engaged to a Tottenham Hotspur’s player and so is a qualified, if non-practising, WAG. But she has too, backpacked across India and knows her way around any bargain-basement-budget- flight website. She parties hard but is always first in work and has informed me, in her fluent Yorkshire, that she has scored a rake of Temazepam for the flight.... In short, a perfect travelling companion.

And so we’re off to tango; the snap of Gaucho in the air, the tang of pampas on the tongue. We fly to BA...as I believe it is known...on Good Friday, renamed Spectacular Friday for the purposes of the trip. When, many years ago, I went to Mexico I married my ex-husband, after a similar rant: ‘we shall find our husbands, I want to marry a writer, an American....’ And I did. However, I married the wrong American. There are loads of them, it was an easy mistake. This time, I’d like to marry the right American. I shall eat steak...the travelling companion’s and mine, she’s also a vegetarian....and drink Malbec and Mate and watch the world tango by......and see what happens.....

Top tip: be careful what you wish.......but if you do want it then think it, say it and don’t give up on it.

A Voyage Round My Mother

And so that was Christmas..........and here we are, 2010. Is that twenty ten or two thousand and ten? If we're going to say twenty twelve what about twenty eleven? Because that really doesn't sound right. And does it really matter?

Anyway, all I said was; 'you should have asked me' and the next thing I knew my mother was packing. My mother wants to go to India, Tamal Nadu to be exact, Ooty to be precise, to visit the orphanage she and my step-father supported. She last went to India after my father died and now, unfortunately, she has been widowed again, and wants to go back. Do we see a pattern forming? Anyway, she didn't have anyone to go with and I have been, several times, before. So all I said was............and now it's 'are we there yet' ..... every day. So it looks like we're heading south for February and there are far worse places to spend February, personally my least favourite month, but first there are jabs and visas and tickets to sort out, maps to peruse and calls to be made, but she remains undaunted.

I am not the only one planning to escape the winter blues though, if my yoga group is anything to go by, and travel is certainly not the prerogative of the young. At the post-Christmas yoga lunch the 68 year old was discussing her up-coming trip to Egypt, another 60something is off to Thailand next week and the one in her late 50s is going to Australia and New Zealand for a month. It was only the 94 year old who was staying put, declaring that she was no longer allowed to fly on planes..........but anyway, she really didn't care and was far too busy planning her 95th birthday celebrations. It turned out she met her husband in Ooty and if it wasn't for the fact that she's rather deaf (her only visible ailment) I would liked to have learnt more, perhaps when we're not sitting across a crowded table. Being mindful of the snow falling outside, and with things still to do that day, none of us drank alcohol except the 94 year old who puts her youthful good health down to walking holidays, yoga, red wine and champagne when she can get it. Inspiring doesn't seem a big enough word for these wonderful women.

It would appear that old people are definitely on the move and the rise of the silver backpacker is on the up. Ten years ago I spent three months with my then 9 year old son travelling on the cheap in Thailand and India. We met only two other couples with kids and at 39 (the son would proudly announce it to anyone who would listen) I was head and shoulders above the average age of any bar, cafe or beach we happened upon, apart from the few leather-skinned old German 'freaks' with their sun bleached hair or the odd toothless English man with an Om earring and an empty chillum. Now, you can't move for buggies on the beach, balding blokes with middle-age spreads and octogenarians giving their arthritis a break from the wet weather back home. Every one's SKIing (Spending the Kids' Inheritance) and why not? As Joan, 72, said to me: "I can live like a Queen in Goa on my pension"........

Top tip: To feel constantly young and vital, join something for which you are the youngest member.