After one brief, disastrous journey (to Bali as a green young Australian, with the sister of my boyfriend, who insisted I do the bargaining for her, then complained about the results), I’ve always travelled alone. Sure there are times when it is tough, but mostly it is wonderful – you talk to waiters, to people on buses, to passing strollers. You get enmeshed in the local world in the way that a couple – that self-contained unit – never do.
If I ever set out on a journey with the specific aim of writing a book, I’ll certainly do the same thing. That intention was only confirmed by reading Frances Mayes’ A Year in the World. The book is subtitled “Journeys of a Passionate Traveller”, yet the only passion she seems to feel is for the husband with whom she travels. As a self-contained unit they sweep (not around the world, as the title misleadingly proclaims), but around the Mediterranean, like a couple cuddling in their living room watching a video.
The result is a book that reads like a school report of “what I did on my holidays”. Well, that’s a little unfair; there is a reasonably sophisticated account of the culture of the destinations – although the sophisticated habit of tossing in local words when English would do perfectly well does become irritating. And it seems every meal, even every instance of window-shopping, is recounted in agonising detail:
“We stop to gaze at a window arranged with trays of candied fruits, gleaming like jewels. The prince perhaps partook of cedro candito, those huge gnarly lemons, almost all peel, as well as the whole candied oranges and lemons, and the array of marzipan fruits, and piles of torrone bianco con fighi secchi, white candy with nuts, and dried figs.”
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