The case for travelling abroad

I’m off. In the week when you may read this, my partner and I will be winging our way to the European mainland, exploring, visiting friends, and immersing ourselves in new places, among new people who speak languages other than our own.

Even as I write this, I can anticipate a sour response from some who read it. Over the past year I’ve learned that any mention of travelling abroad draws from certain quarters three types of disgruntlement. Three, in fact, of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The first is Envy. ‘Oh, bully for you!’, ‘It’s all right for some’, etc.

This I disregard. Between youth and old age I’ve made the journey from sleeping in the kitchen in order to accommodate an extra lodger to keep up my mortgage payments, to (now) being able to treat cash dispensers as what as a child I thought banks were for: a place to get money when you want some.