I found an undiscovered country: Great Britain

This summer, as a consequence of the credit crunch, rising air fares and a strong euro, more than half of all Britons chose to spend their holidays in this country. Predictably this was also the summer that proved to be one of the dullest and wettest on record. August may have been, according to the Met Office, the UK’s seventh wettest since records began in 1929, but for me there was a silver lining to the rainclouds. Like many working-class British Asians of my generation, we never went on holidays during my childhood. In recent years I have attempted to make amends by travelling as much as possible, but this has invariably meant going abroad, the idea of holidaying in this country striking me as pointless and dull. The intention of travel, I reasoned, was to broaden the mind, so what stimulation could be gained from not even leaving these shores? How wrong I was.