Mind the Gap Year

“…It was amaaaazing. you have to go!”

No I don’t. I will not die, go blind, or become a zenophobic hermit by not going travelling. Travelling of course now means going to at least one of the three essential gap year destinations; Australia, South America, and South East Asia (meaning Thailand, but South East Asia sounds more cultured). One of these destinationa will suffice to be regarded as ‘travelling’, but you will always be an almost of the intrepid globe trotter club. Two is admirable, you are 33% more cultured than the almost. Three and you are one of the elite; you were mugged at least once, the tan marks of your surfer adorements acquired in ‘Oz’ were almost permanently etched on your skin, and your flip-flops were glued to your feet until at least the end of your first year of trapsing around campus ‘hanging out your arse‘.

It is not that I am bitter about not going travelling (by travelling I mean subscribing to all of the above.) It is more that I feel like I’ve actually done it because of the amount of photo albums and slideshows I’ve endured. I hold it against no-one for travelling and ‘finding themselves’, I just resent the notion that it is something everyone should do, like vote (an example of a genuine imperative I fully welcome being thrown at me.) Perhaps I need to go to understand it? Needless to say I admire greatly those who volunteer abroad on gap years and at any other time, and would never cast cynicism on their charitable endeavours. It is the indulgence of the hedonistic travels that I despair of, and mainly because I know that I will soon be party to this phenomena upon which I pour much tongue-in-cheek scorn.

My guilty fear is that come June I will be spending a month in California, to be documented via geogaphically informative facebook statuses; ‘not being gay but it was beautiful‘~backdrop profile pictures, and of course the endless photo albums thrust under mildly interested friends faces despite them already having seen them all online, when I return. I am at least sure enough of my self to know that at least I won’t try and estimate how many nights “I wasn’t smashed!!“. I will however, undoubtedly return to tell everyone that they must ‘go travelling’, despite only having been on what is essentially a longer than usual holiday. My excursion may not even count as ‘travelling’, I assume a certain amount of months must be spent abroad? And a certain amount of cultures and languages must be largely ignored in favour of Westernised piss-ups on beaches, interspersed with token visits to moss covered temples and picturesque waterfalls?

The saving grace will be that although I’m not retracing the footsteps of the vast majority of gap year travellers, I am just shamelessly immersing myself in perhaps the one culture most similar to Britains (or vice versa.) With this being so many of my experiences won’t be of great amazement to my family and friends, and as such they won’t suffer greatly when I recall ‘this time when I was travelling…‘. This is of course a highly irrelevant post given the developments in Westminster today, but I couldn’t think of anything particularly insightful to write about the political furore and our new Prime Minister David Cameron. Other than that between him, Nick Clegg, and Michael Gove there is the makings of a remarkably Thunderbirds looking governement taking shape, if shape be the right word.