Huckepack

Forgive me if I am alittle loose with the structure in the following. Today , you see, finds me in a state of some excitement. I am about to do something unprecedented in its sponteneity and general throw-caution-to-the-winds-ness. I am not saying what it is. If it's to come out in time it'll come out in time. I could add all sorts of intrigue, but I'm not going to. But I am getting nervous already. This is well cool and I'm not saying any more.

When I have said in the past that I am dull, this is what I mean. I know that we tend to think that other people are having a far more exciting time than us, although we really know that they are doing exactly what we are, and thinking the same thing about us. But I haven't done much. My life has been quite uneventful for quite a long time when I think about it. I have never been to Australia, for example.

This is a rite of passage for most middle-class British young people. My friend Guy went for three months, my cousin went for six and several people from school and university went at various times as well. One ended up as a steward at the 2000 Olympic Games. My ex-girlfriend's sister emigrated there. Perhaps it's an ex-colonial thing, but we have the odd idea that Australia is somehow not that far; this is unlike France which, despite our experience of thirty minute trips through the Channel Tunnel and the fact we can see it from the beach at Dover, is somehow unimaginably scary and distant. Similarly, Estonia is on Mars and Bahrain is actually mythical. The fact that I, a middle class university graduate, have never been is a point of some embarrasment to me.

Although I have travelled widely in Europe. This is some consolation. In fact, when at school I had to listen to the pseuds banging on about how "The East Is Calling" and so on, though I was sort of looked down on for planning an month of youth hostelling with an Interrail ticket, I at least had evidence I was actually going. This is unlike a certain person who will remain nameless, but whom we'll call Tom Reynolds just for argument's sake, who bought a Lonely Planet to India to conspicuously read in the common room for six months, but never actually went.

Poland is lovely. I went there when a Polish friend from work offered to drive me to his hometown of Lublin. Leicester has always had a large Polish population, and it has doubled since 2004 when Poland joined the EU. Half the houses in my 'hood are rented by groups of Polish migrant workers now. Every Monday we see the latest arrivals queueing outside the job agency across the road from my office, fresh off the coach from Warsaw with passports and application forms in hand and a hopeful look on their face. Leicester, which was international to begin with, is now like a small version of London, where fifty languages mix on the streets and you can eat at a different kind of restaurant every night and not repeat yourself in three months. It's marvellous.

500,000 Poles have come to work in Britain over the last two years. This is quite a lot, and the racists aren't happy. I can't see why - you'd have thought having half a million blonde haired, blue-eyed white people move in would have delighted them, but no. It is notable that most of the protesting about the influx of European workers has been done in the pages of local newspapers in places like Market Harborough where no Pole has ever set foot and they probably never will, prefering as they do to shuttle between Leicester, London and home, rather than perniciously undermine the ancient ways of life in small rural towns with a minority polulation that can be counted in single figures. I will never understand the mind of the racist, and I thank God that this is the case.

Anyway, Europe has been enough for me so far. I lived in Germany, I have been to ten European capitals, I have been to Barcelona twice and Paris three times. Berlin is fantastic, Amsterdam is very messy and Luxembourg is so obscure that most people can't tell you one single thing about it. I like all sorts of things about it. The feeling of going to sleep on a train in one country and waking up in another is unique. I remember sitting in the carriage of a train from Barcelona to San Sebasitan, listening to my MiniDisc player (it was 2003 and they were still quite hight-tech then) and grinning like an idiot as Maxine complained about the girl from New Zealand sat opposite who was taking all the legroom. In the morning after about three hours sleep, me and the French couple from our compartment (who we were certain were trying to have sex from the moment the guard put the lights out) spent an hour in happy silence watching the hills of the Basque Coutry pass by. I felt as close as I ever have to serene.

In fact, a lot of my travel was on the one Interrailing trip, but I think it still counts. We dealt with six languages we could not speak, ten currencies we could not work out the value of and I left my wallet in Bayeux and so spent the next eleven days living off traveller's cheques and loans from Guy. I still owe him a couple of hundred quid, I think. We had a huge argument in Ghent bus station. It was lots and lots of fun, and I suppose trying to travel a 10,000km circuit round Western Europe in thirty days was a bit mad after all. The only downside is that as we only left the EU once, I so far have only amassed one stamp in my passport. How dull. I have until April next to get more.

With this in mind perhaps I will still do all the things that the "100 Things To Do Before You Die!" say you should do after all. Well, some of them. I can never go cliff diving because I can't swim. I am scared of heights, so parachuting is out. I hate tequila, am far too scared of the police to get myself arrested in a foreign country and will never go bungee jumping because it's just stupid.

But perhaps the bar has fallen anyway. According to the adverts, merely giving yourself a running commentary as you undress or using the lavatory as your girlfriend uses the bath is enough to get you a WKD side. I would never do the second because it is extremely rude, but I could manage the first, as long as I was sure I was alone in the house. I'm not getting caught doing that. I have some standards