We drove north and parked in the designated car park with a quarter of an hour to spare before the minibus was due to pick us up and take us to our holiday destination. On it would be up to six strangers with whom we were to spend a week in the confined space of a boat. Marvellous. Happy days.
There was only one slight snag. Catriona and I would be enjoying the holiday for free in exchange for my writing an article about it. And the company sponsoring us had asked me not to tell the others, who were paying a great deal of money, about this arrangement. We had chosen a spot next to a tricolour-decked modernist monument to General de Gaulle and sat with our luggage on the monument’s plinth in the sunshine and waited. And while we waited I considered what would be my strategy when the inevitable question arose, probably over the dinner table, of what it was I did for a living.
I calculated that the stark truth — that I was a sort of journalist — would immediately arouse suspicions of a travel freebie. Especially as everything about me — clothes, shoes, conversation, habits, life experience, table manners, even political opinions — would flag me up as an individual who is living from hand to mouth and would never in a million years be able to afford such a luxurious holiday. The wealthy, I’ve noticed, are very sharp-eyed about that kind of thing. So while we waited, Catriona and I debated what I would say when I was asked what I did to keep going.
I ran through a few of the occupations I’ve offered under similar circumstances, such as trainee IT technician and temporary night-shift meat packer, which act like a tranquilliser dart on all but the most dogged interrogator, stopping the conversation dead in its tracks and moving it hastily on to some completely unrelated topic.
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