The unexpected benefits of being a mature traveller
Covid-19 has had a largely positive effect for the more mature traveller. For a start, it’s quietened things down. Well, it has – apart from the monkey-house screeching about masks, tests and, especially, quarantine. This doesn’t much impress the mature traveller. In the past, he’s been stranded for a fortnight in Monterey laid low by something very like dysentery with no money or, pre-mobile phones, any way to say “farewell”. A dash to Calais? A fortnight at home? All the way with regular toilets? You’re laughing.
Lessened, too, has been the nagging suspicion that we ought to be more thrusting, doing the sort of stuff urged upon us by people with sturdy thighs, glossy hair and no intention of retiring. You know what they mean: clambering through rain forests, freezing among penguins or feigning fascination with Mongolian daily life. Frankly, I didn’t feel guilty about not doing this stuff when I was 25 and feel less so now I’m not. When Covid put it even further beyond reach, compounding the dangers already presented by venom, hypothermia and yaks’ milk, I have to say I was more relieved than anything.
Confinement, qualified or total, has also given us the opportunity to muse upon past travels, sharing them with close family members. “Tell us more about riding with gauchos,” they cry, and then leave the room. From somewhere comes the sound of Minecraft, Volume Alpha. You understand them. Understanding youth is one of the advantages of being mature. Not having to play Minecraft is another.
Maturity has further advantages yet, at any time. These include:
Being able legitimately to refuse leisure activities favoured by people under 40. Backing out previously meant you were a wuss. Now it’s the wisdom of age which stops you bungee-jumping or cycling down cliffs, and experience which keeps you from 72-hour raves. “If I’m to spend three days in mud, I need the Who, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix,” I tell my young friend with plaits, a bandana and no shirt. “I set my standards high decades ago. And it was anarchists who burned down my tent. Will you have anarchists?”
The possibility of being silly in the company of grand-children (as you couldn’t be with your children) because proper parents will sort out the consequences. This might include running about, say, the streets of St Rémy-de-Provence, hiding round corners and jumping out at passers-by. It is an enormously rewarding activity. In normal circumstances an old man may not leap out at strangers, scream like a banshee and then run off, not without exciting adverse comment. Flanking him with four-year-old twins doesn’t make it any more popular – there are some very precious people in St Rémy-de-Provence – but limits the possibility of police involvement.
That said, it doesn’t do to get carried away with childish things. For instance, I’ll not be returning to the Palace of Sweets, Nougat and Memories in Montelimar – not alone, anyway. Montelimar is world capital of nougat. The palace expands nougat’s story to encompass sugar, sweets, toys, dolls and play-time. In my experience, it is not the sort of place in which mothers wish to see a middle-aged man on his own. They gathered their tots in around their skirts, unaware that this was not a pervert but a student of nougat. Thinking to act naturally, I entered a child’s competition about sugar and nougat. The quiz was for infants, so I got all the answers right. Then I posted the form into a play post-box, upon which it was noted that the prize was the winner’s own weight in nougat. Crikey. Our post-lady is tiny. She’d never manage the path under a 12-stone slab of nougat. She didn’t have to. I didn’t win, perhaps because I lied about my age. I put it down as 53.
That’s another advantage of grandchildren. I can return with them to the palace for a more reasonable crack at the prize. Any fit post person should manage three and a half stone of nougat.
Being a mature traveller also means you may care less, indeed not at all, about doing the correct thing. It is liberating to sleep through the ballet, side-step the archaeological museum or tell the fellow in the Chinese restaurant what he can do with his chopsticks. “Only an oppressive tradition would insist on the eating of rice with straight bits of wood,” I tell the waiter. Should he stand firm, as he sometimes has, you might tell him that you will eat rice with sticks as soon as he eats soup with a rock. Mature people can get away with that, for the Chinese are great respecters of age.
We may also, unashamedly, cut up spaghetti with a knife. It’s a privilege of being old and having evolved to serenity. While in no way altering the taste, chopping spaghetti avoids unsightly slurping and a shirt-full of sauce. The Italian insistence on twirling lengths with spoon and fork is their stab at superiority. Once they had the Renaissance. Now they have spaghetti twirling. Humouring them on this is patronising to a great nation. They tut-tut because you’re chopping spaghetti, you tell them that Leonardo didn’t give a tuppenny damn how he ate his pasta. That’s probably a fact.
Older travellers have had time to pick up trace elements of culture. We might dither about base-jumping but can be relied on to know that, if we’re swimming in the sea off Bulgaria, we’re not in the Mediterranean (an eye-opener for Jack from Preston). Also to reply with confidence when a young American lady sharing our tour through the Belgian Ardennes asks: “So who was this Hitler guy?
Nor do we complain so much. We’ve more distant points of reference. Airline food is poor? Really? You’re flying at 500mph, 35,000 feet up, and you’re upset about lasagne? Ryanair runs airborne cattle-trucks? Come on. Back then, Manchester to Marseille was half-a-year’s salary – not, as today, double the price of a cheese sandwich – and Ryanair has seats, too. Up to you whether or not you push, shove and moo. Mature people generally don’t. The local entertainment grates? You never saw Mike and Bernie Winters at the end of a pier. Too many tourists in Marbella, Cancun, Langkawi? Button it. Fifty years ago, aspirations topped out at Bangor and Bognor. Brilliant places, both, but if we now go exotic, it’s because the country is better off. You want to bring back poverty to clear these places for your convenience? (If you’re in Cancun, incidentally, you’re part of the ‘too’ many anyway.)
In the same vein, the older traveller retains a sense of wonder: that he no longer has to wait a week for 24 photos; that he may – from his home in Rotherham – know all there is to know about a hotel room in Adelaide and that there’s a woman in his car who will lead him to any hamlet anywhere on the planet. Until, of course, she screws up – directing him to London, Ontario when he wants Golders Green. In this instance, our mature person is also advantaged for he knows not only how to read a paper map but also how to fold it when finished.
The older traveller is often more welcome and perceived as less menacing. Compare the greeting for a single middle-aged lady – or a decent couple – with that extended to eight young louts falling into a bar in Spain, harmonising on: “Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West”. It happens. It has happened. The owner’s delight was well disguised. Another fine thing about being old: you’ve been through the rites of passage and come out the other side. By quite a long way.
One other reason that the single middle-aged lady or decent couple are more welcome is that we’ve worked longer, so may have more money. We’ll go for the à la carte rather than the panini. Nor does it make any kind of sense that we get museums, galleries and trains cheap when 30-year-olds with two kids and a mortgage pay full whack. I always pay the proper price. “Is sir a senior citizen?” they ask. “No, sir damned well isn’t,” I reply. “And the name’s Brad.”
A final advantage: a mature traveller can shamelessly make use of public benches for resting purposes. There are some I particularly appreciate when visiting Morecambe, as I do more often than I expected to. They overlook the bay. I would like one to be dedicated to my memory, with the mention that this was one of my favourite spots to sit and eat take-away fried chicken.
