How comfortable are you with risk?

I think we all have an idea of where we fit on the thrill-seeking scale, whether our perfect day out would involve white water rafting or a visit to a National Trust property followed by a cup of tea and a piece of carrot cake. The recent easing of lockdown restrictions has only highlighted the difference between the white water rafters and the carrot cake eaters.

Some of us are happily back browsing in shops, eating in restaurants and drinking in pubs, while others aren’t entirely happy about emerging from their cocoons and do so only if armed with a face mask, gloves, hand sanitiser and a hat accessorised with a 2-metre pool noodle. I am not one of those people, but I would dearly love one of those hats. I have lost my beret, so can no longer pull it down over my forehead and do an embarrassing rendition of Victoria Wood looking for her friend Kimberley. I think my friends and family are so relieved not to have to experience that any more that I suspect foul play in the hat’s disappearance. They’ll be sorry they hid it when they see that it’s been replaced by a pool-noodle hat. I can visualise Victoria Wood in one. She’d have loved it.

Photo from the Daily Mirror

Then there’s the question of holidays. You’re either planning to travel abroad as soon as possible or you’ve decided that you won’t be leaving the country at all this year and possibly not next year either. Earlier this year (in that distant pre-virus time) I was thinking that it would be nice to spend a little more time at home and a bit less travelling the world. That wish has bizarrely come true, but it’s one thing to choose to travel less and quite another to have the decision made for you. More time at home is looking less and less appealing with each passing day.

I am craving exotic places. I know that Britain is beautiful and there are many spots I’d love to visit. It would be wonderful to see the Orkney Islands, Cheddar Gorge or Portmeirion, but I don’t crave those things in the way that I do a sight of the Great Mosque of Isfahan or the thrill of seeing gorillas in Uganda.

I’d say that I am pretty much in the middle of the thrill-seeking scale and so will not be visiting Iran any time soon. And I can’t imagine why anyone would go to North Korea. So, where do those who are neither white water rafters nor carrot cake eaters plan to travel next? Malaysia and Japan of course, but not until next year. In the meantime, my pool-noodle hat is on order.