5th January 2009

Life on Your Own Doorstep

The first great journeys took place by tricycle. Yes, on my trike I set off to strange lands. Once, I was brought back home to Battersea High Street by a policeman who had found me ploughing through heavy traffic towards Clapham. I was about four years old.

This desire to see the world was never cured. Eventually I was jumping on buses and trains in India and Greece, Australia and California, and getting out of my depth in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

Travel enough, though, and it becomes clear that no matter how wonderful the destination, people who live there think it's nowhere special. When I mentioned to some hardworking farm-hands on St Lucia that British holiday brochures describe the Caribbean as paradise, they were incredulous. It's the UK, they said, that is truly paradise.

They were wrong, of course. There is no paradise anywhere on this earth. But they were right, too. It is an illusion that the further you travel, the greater your experience will be. Countries nearer to home became my specialities. There seems to be no end of interest within a day's journey.

At the same time, paradoxically, travel made even home seem increasingly foreign. This year I have five books coming out. Four are guidebooks to France and Ireland. The other is a novel, The J-Word.

The J-Word is set in my own London neighbourhood. In fact, I could almost have written this book just by looking out of my window. Yet of the five titles, it is most about "strangers in a strange land."

Travel industry forecasts suggest cash-strapped consumers will be holidaying close to home in 2009. That's no bad thing. There is a whole world of experience on our doorstep.

Andrew Sanger

[To find out more about The J-Word, published on 6th January, see www.andrewsanger.com/The-J-Word]