TOM UTLEY: A golden gap year for oldies? If I took a long cruise with Mrs U, she’d be sick of me before we left British waters
Let me start with a hot tip for readers who have trouble getting to sleep at night — and, no, that wag at the back there, I don’t mean reading my weekly columns. I can’t promise that my method will succeed with you. All I can say for sure is that it works a treat for me.
As you pull up the duvet and switch off the light, the trick is to clear your head of all the troubles of the day, and concentrate instead on a cherished fantasy.
For example, a perennial favourite of mine is a dream that I’ve written a best-selling novel, universally recognised by the critics as a consummate masterpiece.
Everywhere I go, as I travel the world on a book-signing tour, adoring fans swoon in admiration of my genius. An extraordinary number of them happen to be beautiful and highly intelligent women.
Inevitably, my book wins all the most coveted awards, culminating in the Nobel Prize in Literature, which I graciously accept from the King of Norway, in a ceremony at which I deliver a speech lauded by one and all for its elegance, wit and modesty.
As you pull up the duvet and switch off the light, the trick is to clear your head of all the troubles of the day, and concentrate instead on a cherished fantasy/Stock Image
In another of my regular fantasies, I’m the world’s greatest all-round sportsman, scoring a winning hat-trick for England in the World Cup final and hitting sixes off every ball in the Ashes Test series. Year after year, I carry off the Wimbledon tennis trophy, while winning every Grand Prix on the circuit and breaking all Olympic records in every event from the discus to the Marathon.
Blissful
In yet another, I perfect a miraculous battery in a makeshift laboratory housed in the shed at the bottom of my garden. Fuelled by a mere thimbleful of water, it delivers limitless pollution-free energy.
Naturally, my invention makes me fabulously rich — a trillionaire many times over — since every house, car, lorry, ship and plane on the planet has to be fitted with Utley’s Patent Water-Fuel Cell. I then spend my immense fortune on a life of exquisite luxury, touring the world in a private yacht as big as the QE2, feted and fawned upon at every port of call.
Of course, you may well think this is all a bit pathetic, since never in a million years will any of my daydreams come true. But if so, you will be missing the point entirely.
The fantasies I’ve listed above, along with many others — you choose your own — don’t represent frustrated ambitions, but are merely devices for getting off to sleep.
Yes, I know that many go along with the late, great Oscar Hammerstein when he wrote: ‘You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, howya gonna have a dream come true?’
I then spend my immense fortune on a life of exquisite luxury, touring the world in a private yacht as big as the QE2, feted and fawned upon at every port of call
But I don’t actually want my bedtime fantasies to turn into reality, since I know that I wouldn’t like it a bit if they did. Take all those adoring fans, worshipping my imaginary literary masterpiece. It’s true that I’ve felt immensely flattered on the three occasions in my life when strangers have asked me for my autograph (though I’ve never quite shaken off the suspicion that all three may have mistaken me for Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean).
But I can well imagine that if I were mobbed every day for my signature or a selfie, it would become intensely irritating — no matter how beautiful or intelligent my admirers might be. That’s not to mention the sheer effort involved in writing a novel, dealing with a publisher, reading and re-reading the proofs and travelling all over the place to sign all those copies.
No, far more satisfying and relaxing, I reckon, is to cut out the all the hard work and simply imagine the glory, in that blissful half-awake state between full consciousness and sleep, when fantasies can take flight.
It’s the same with my imaginary sporting successes. The truth is that I’ve taken hardly 20 minutes’ strenuous exercise since that wonderful day 50 years ago when I left school, and was no longer dragooned into organised games.
Fantasy
The very thought of the agonising training to which world-class athletes have to subject themselves fills me with the deepest horror.
However, in the fantasy world we can all conjure up, as we drift off to sleep, we can skip the sweat and the aching muscles, and climb straight on to the winner’s podium.
As for the trillions I earn from my patented fuel cell (never mind that I failed my O-level physics), I love the thought of travelling in luxury to places I’ve never visited. But that’s just it: it’s the thought alone that appeals.
Though in my youth I longed to travel, if only I had enough money, the fact is that my feet stopped itching many years ago. Now that, at last, I can better afford to see the world, the bedtime fantasy is quite enough for me. Better, indeed, than the real thing.
If we’re to believe the findings of a survey this week, however, others of my generation are much more enterprising. A poll of 1,500 Britons finds that as many as a fifth of the over-60s feel they missed out during the pandemic, and say they are now considering taking a ‘golden gap year’ — by which they mean an extended period of travel, while they are still able to enjoy it.
As for the trillions I earn from my patented fuel cell (never mind that I failed my O-level physics), I love the thought of travelling in luxury to places I’ve never visited
Of these, some 55 per cent say they want to see the Northern Lights, while others fancy visiting New Zealand, the Caribbean, New York, the Amalfi coast and the Greek islands.
Leave aside the remarkable coincidence that all these destinations happen to be served by Norwegian Cruise Line, which commissioned the research. (Call me an old cynic, but isn’t it funny how such surveys almost invariably reach conclusions that fit the interests of those who pay for them?)
Palaver
I have a horrible feeling that if I took a cruise with Mrs U, trapped aboard a ship with her for weeks on end, with no possibility of escaping to the pub on the pretext of taking the dog for a walk, she’d be heartily sick of me before we left British waters.
As for the Northern Lights, I dare say they are much more impressive when you experience them for real, than they look on TV. But why go all that way to see them, when we can conjure them up in our heads before we drift off to sleep, warm and snug in our own beds at home — without the fear of having to share breakfast yet again with the crashingly boring couple who befriended us on the day we boarded?
Even flying, which I used to adore, has lost much of its appeal to me as I’ve grown older, what with all the queues, cancellations and the maddening palaver of airport security.
As for the Northern Lights, I dare say they are much more impressive when you experience them for real, than they look on TV
So, no. While I doff my cap to those energetic Baby Boomers who are intent on taking a golden gap year, I reckon I’ve seen quite enough of the world to last me for a while yet. The rest I’m happy to leave to my imagination.
But, oh dear, I see trouble ahead. Only the other day, Mrs U told me it was absurd that I still hadn’t done anything about my passport, which expired more than two years ago at the beginning of the lockdown, when there seemed no point in renewing it.
With that excuse no longer available to me, I’m now under strict orders to apply for a new one, ASAP.
I fear that before I know it, I’ll be lying in some far-flung foreign hotel bed, lulling myself to sleep with blissful fantasies of the stress-free comforts of home.
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