About the armchair traveller…
Sometimes life changing moments are obvious (a plane crashes, the dog chews an electric wire, a Frenchman named Claude asks you to marry him), others only become evident years later (walking along the Rhine you ask your kids to stand in front of a Swiss flag draped house and accidentally promise to take them to every country in Europe to remake the photo as they grow older, taller, wiser and less willing to empty the dishwasher).
A global pandemic would probably be considered one of the obvious life changing moments — we were 42 countries into our adventure when the COVID cancellations began, first we dropped Romania and Moldova, and then a long dreamed of overland trip from Denmark to Lithuania.
We were stuck.
We were stuck in Birmingham.
I tried to get fit. I tried to learn French. And then a less obviously life changing moment occurred. In a moment of boredom hiding from the rain in front of a fire, I picked up one of those presents you buy for the children because you want it — “the Travel Book: A journey through every country in the world.” I was vicariously living through the pictures and words, dreaming of a time when I could bore people at parties with tales of getting stuck on the salt plains of Peru, when a new idea struck. I could go to a different country each week without ever leaving the house. I would make the journey through books, music, food, films and anything else I could get my locked-down hands on.
Several weeks in and friends have started to ask to join us on our journey, so I am beginning to blog, this may interest them and will certainly help me remember when I travelled the globe in lockdown with nothing more than the internet and a multicultural city.
*Author’s note* I am trying, where possible, to only make vegan (or at least vegetarian) food, buy second hand books from charities, and steer far away from Amazon. Sometimes though Amazon offers the only opportunity to watch a film about Angolan music or Anguillan food, I am therefore ensuring I’m not helping fill Jeff Bezos’ pockets by “borrowing” my brother-in-law’s account. I suggest you find ways to do the same.
*Author’s note 2* This blog was meant to be called “Arrive without travelling” - a line from the Beatles song The Inner Light. But sadly a Beatles fan already has that. It’s a shame as the first line is particularly apt: “without going out of my door, I can know all things on earth.”
