It was nice, but I couldn’t wait to get home.
I’m a limpet in winter because I like to stay put and relish the nourishment I have built around myself.
Here, I have my library, my guitars and records, my paints, our encircling sofa, our kitchen, our verandah, our trees and our garden. I don’t need much else. If I do need human company other than my family, I meet a friend in a café for a chat about the way the noisy world trumpets travel to distant places as a way to heal the soul.
Tell that to the Spanish facing eviction by tourists in Barcelona and Majorca, or to the Venetians facing suffocation by tourism.
It’s winter, the traditional time to hunker down and build a fire.
But not for everyone, it seems.
Caravans, camper vans, airport queues and cruise ships are trundling around the country along state highways and bush tracks across borders and seas.
It happens all year round, but winter travel seems more obvious as people head north searching for the endless summer.
Those with bigger wallets don’t just stop at Queensland. The pages of my weekend newspapers are stacked with travel supplements encouraging people to go ultra-luxury river cruising in Europe for a unique experience in living history or take once-in-a-lifetime journeys to the wild, frozen ends of the earth. The trouble is, these places aren’t unique or wild any more. They’re packed to the gunnels with first-world phone-wielding tourists spending their superannuation on the experience of a lifetime.
Next year, it will be another lifetime and another experience on a 20-deck cruise ship twinkling with pink chandeliers, cinemas, cabaret, bowling alleys, bars and mind-blowing water slide thrills.
Despite what the travel sections of the weekend papers say, I don’t think I am unique in celebrating the joys of staying home when things get cold and wet or when the world just gets too demanding.
Earlier this month, I read a piece by Australian writer Kathy Lette about JOMO — the Joy of Missing Out. Ignoring invitations, relief when an event is cancelled or settling down with a good fireside book would not be familiar to the determined social engager. But to the winter limpet, it’s a recipe for sanity.
I can easily leave it to others to join queues in cars or planes or boats and shuffle shoulders with thousands of others determined to have an experience.
Sometimes on a sparkling winter’s day, I wouldn’t mind a nice stroll along the Camino de Santiago in Spain and France, or the Lycian Way in Türkiye or Offa’s Dyke in the Welsh borders.
But the thought of getting there just makes my nerves and my wallet scream.
The Scots have a word for dreary, damp and gloomy days: dreich.
As a youngster, I spent many a dreich day walking on my home-town beach with my dog, who didn’t mind the drizzle and dull skies at all. To be honest, neither did I. The world seemed closer and more enveloping on a good, dreich day. Today, a walk in the dripping bush creates the same feeling.
So, here’s to a glass of sparkling Gewürztraminer by the fire, pattering rain on the roof, Bill Callahan on the stereo and staying home.
We’ll talk about the bustling joys of spring later.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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