Working on the Chinese principle that a person's true age is calculated from the day (or night) of their conception, I shall, occidentally speaking, have reached my biblical three score years and ten at the end of this year which means I had better have another look at all those places that have no wheelchair access.
Not that I want to go bungee-jumping off Niagara Falls or swim with sharks in the Red Sea or walk unarmed through the Somalian bush. Indeed, a sandy beach, good food, a warm sea, and an absence of mosquitoes (it's too tiring applying all that repellent) is pretty much all I want. I don't want to be guided around monuments; I don't want to be told how many bricks it took to build the damned thing; I don't want to make new friends on holidays (I can't manage the ones I have at home). In short, I want Leisure with a capital L - a slob's holiday!
So when the little woman said, "I suppose we ought to think about a holiday!", it sounded at first as if she had said, "I suppose we ought to think about the Greek balance of payments problem", but a moment later I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
While Padma will be busy with her family in Surabaya, I shall vege out in my secret hide-away high up in the hills of northern Bali. No tourists, no television, no a la carte meals, no regulated swimming pool hours, no minibar which transmogrifies a can of Coca-Cola sold for 3000 rupiah at the local 'warung' into a ludicrous $4.50 (plus service charge).
I'll be reading books, looking at the sky, listening to the song of birds, taking a swim at any hour of the day or night in the pool (or in the ocean which is a short, death-defying bejak-ride away) ...
... or enjoying an hour-long massage (for the equivalent of a minibar Coca-Cola).
Bali here I come!
