Travelling assaults the mind. We do without so we can go and do; cry 'poor' to live without working while on our journey; serve and wait in order to be waited on, play pauper in order to be prince - if only for a day - indulge in feasting Babette style.
What sort of feasting is to be had? Research continues - next port of call - food.
Most of our accommodation will be Bed and Breakfast lodgings. Very rustic in the Eastern Bloc countries to lighthouses and castles in England. Big, full, cooked breakfasts are familiar territory. Montclare has a menu of 17 courses from which to choose and varies all the time.....but that is for others - not the cook. The saying 'eat like a king at breakfast, a prince at lunch and a beggar for dinner' will become the new maxim. Not only to manage our finances well and make the most of what we have already paid for in the tariff, but to work our nutrition and bodies well. Neither do we want to look for food at night with no transport, or pay for expensive restaurant meals when a bite will do. Even so the scale may be more princely than king size. So we start to practise now - go the portion sizes - 3 for breakfast, 2 for lunch and 1 for tea. Eat up well and work it off. Think of all the poor people - they could live on what you leave...did your mum ever say that to you?
Memories of childhood come clashing. Meal times and simple pleasures; hard times and dreams and fantasies - a song I made up when I was very young - looking up at the jet above...."One day I'm going away....." The utter impossibility of a trip around the world by one living in a housing commission area - the daughter of a steel worker - did not bear thinking about. The yard next door was the foreign country. New neighbours were the culture clash. A spare penny to spend at the shops (a teaspoon of musk lollies) was the splash-out indulgence. Mum cooked wonderful traditional Aussie fare - meat and three veg - dad worked hard and had a garden (still does) and caught fish or prawns in rare spare time. The once a year chicken for Christmas (from the pen in the back yard) was such a treat. When we were older we went to the Chinese for our birthday celebration. It was like travelling to a foreign country with wonderful flavours, strange writing and bright colours. What would I choose next year....
We never wasted anything - and still try not to - think of all the poor starving Africans. We knew how hard it was to get the meal on the plate. To start out the 'pauper' and end up 'the prince' is sobering. Yet the solid and resounding richness of my childhood leaves all promise of princely fare a little empty.
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