Rome@Large

Rome was important in my life – standing in the Forum at the age of 8 with my mother telling me the story of how Julius Caesar was killed by his best friend was the exact moment when I ‘got’ history and decided to become an archaeologist. The fact that I was told this week that he was actually killed at another temple nearby and that I later discovered – halfway through an archaeology degree – that I would be a really bad archaeologist and became a travel writer instead are incidental. Rome has quite literally changed my life. At the age of 8, I literally cried when I had to leave.

So I was happy to be back there this week, staying at the gorgeous Regina Hotel Baglioni on via Veneto. It’s just had a make-over and is sumptuous – all black and gold and art deco, with Moroccan lanterns in the bar, an ostrich leather bedhead in my room and a pumpkin risotto at dinner that converted a lifelong loather of pumpkin to drools of delight.

Rome itself, after a ferociously stormy introduction, turned on a smiling face with cobalt blue skies, perfect for gelato at Giolitti’s, via Uffici del Vicario, a local institution that has stood near the Pantheon since 1900 and is considered by Romans to serve the finest icecream in the city. It was an ideal way to rest the aching knees after the steep climb up to the roof of the Castel Sant Angelo, Hadrian’s tomb converted into papal fortress. Another great thing about the city – the way it is so multi-layered and recycled – history heaped on history – Raphael and King Vittorio Emmanuel buried in the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple, the colonnade of St Peter made out of columns recycled from the forum and the Colisseum. Sensible and frustrating at the same time.

In the afternoon, we were invited to visit Gattinoni couture house where we had an amazingly entertaining interview with superstar designer, Guillermo Mariotto, and got a chance to see up close some of the stunning creations, from frocks made for Audrey Hepburn in the 1950s, to this year’s collection. Sometimes I do love being a journalist, even if I did feel like an elephant at an elf convention. From there to the Etruscan museum (which I hadn’t ever seen before – amazing exhibits, badly labelled) before a quick trip to the Campo di Fiori in search of parmesan and porcini to bring home.

Fat lady rating for Rome as a destination – food 9/10 (it loses a point for being too tempting); getting around (7/10 – relatively easy public transport, but it does involve a lot of walking, stairs, uneven streets etc and it gets tiring. Overall rating – 10/10.

Happy Birthday, Simon

Simon Cowell is reputedly throwing a $1 million party for his 50th birthday. It seems to be the time when everybody throws caution to the wind and spends their way into the next decade. I got there with my last birthday. The zeros had never worried me before. Everyone has their crunch point and for me it was the 6s – you could no longer say you were in your early 30s, 40s… so 36 and 46 were bad years. But 50 came as a bit of a shock to the system – and I had a long run in.

My birthday came at the tail end of a long and expensive year of 50th birthday parties – the weekend in Germany with an old schoolfriend, the weekend in the Isle of Wight with the university crowd, the summer party on the river in Essex and I am afraid I skipped the weekend in Paris due to poverty.

Meantime all around me were the reminders of closing decrepitude. Facebook suddenly loaded up with adverts for HRT, menopause vitamins and 50+ dating websites (sidebar - do men get this depressing array or do they get Thai massage and Ferraris on the basis that they are going to have a mid-life crisis and blow all their dosh on inappropriate toys?).

I live almost next to the Westminster One-Stop Shop (council offices) and suddenly realized that I am now eligible for their toenail clipping service (for those who can no longer bend enough to do their own), 50+ coffee mornings, and a host of other elderly goodies. The final straw came when a friend, who is over 70 and is beginning to look for retirement villages, showed me some brochures and I saw that some of them take people from the age of 55.

I am sorry – I don’t feel ready to be a semi-old person yet. I might be creakier in the joints than I used to be, but age is in the mind and telling someone that they are getting old is just bad for them. Far better to send them off down the Amazon in a dugout canoe!

So, I could either sit in a corner and mourn or have the best party possible. Result? A gaggle of close friends and family went to Marrakech – one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, a perfect combination of east and west, with warmth and sunshine, friendly people and good food. I celebrated surrounded by many (though sadly not quite all) of the people I love best in the world, in stunning surroundings. And now I am going across Africa by train. The next big family celebration is my father’s 80th birthday. Never one to be outdone, he’s planning a trip to Luxor. I hope that when I get there I will be as young as he is.

And meantime, happy birthday, Simon – remember that Westminster Council are ready and willing to give you a great deal on coffee mornings and pedicures.

Past Life Flashes

I was at school with Claudette from the ages of 4 to 18 and Carol from 5 to 10. Kathy moved to town when she was 10 and became my best friend for the rest of our school days. Glenn was my first ever boyfriend (first date set up by Kathy at the age of 14, holding hands nervously at the film of Godspell, very conscious of my parents sitting three rows behind us in the cinema). 
I haven’t seen Claudette, Carol or Glenn since I left school in 1976. Kathy now lives in New Zealand and while I have stayed in touch over the years I hardly ever see her. Creina has been a family friend since I was 4; she was also my French teacher and more responsible than anyone else for teaching me to think. She lives in North Wales.

For most, a school reunion isn’t anything special, but when you grew up in Umtali, Rhodesia, a town of some 10,000 people on the remote eastern Mozambique border, it becomes a very big deal indeed. The town is now Mutare, the country is now Zimbabwe, a whole way of life has changed, the people I grew up have scattered across four continents. 
On Sunday, in St James Park, one of the other schools, Umtali Girls High School (not even my school) – held a reunion picnic to celebrate their centenary, inviting anyone from our tiny outpost of Africa to join in.

For once, this summer, the sun shone. The deckchair man was vigilant in demanding his £1.50. People rushed around trying to work out if they knew you behind the inevitable swelling caused by age and beer (Rhodies love their beer). It was all-white and backward-looking in some ways, but it was comfortable. No need for explanations, a shared experience of something long gone, a common past and old friends and memories. There were the people I grew up with, talking about the plays my mother produced for the local amateur theatre, the competitive puddings on the local dinner party circuit, Nolan's Electrical shop where I had my first Saturday job, Claudette and Carol who shared my earliest birthday parties and Glenn who shared my first fumbling attempts at romance. And Kathy who shared all my teenage adventures. It was a scary, extraordinary, special afternoon. Thank you, UGHS, for letting me relive a time and place far away and long ago.

A Gentle Stroll

Believe me, however much they smile, there are few words more likely to strike terror into the heart of an overweight, arthritic travel writer than 'walking tour'. I immediately get suspicious when people tell me we are going for a gentle stroll. It may be just that – a leisurely potter around a historic town, fetching up in a pub or tearoom, but it can just as easily be a route-march across some steep rubble-strewn hillside. In one nightmarish case, it turned into a 4hr hike across the African bush in search of buffalo that only ended when I sat down under an acacia tree, absolutely refused to move any further even under threat of being eaten by lions. I simply couldn't move another step. So now, I end up cross-questioning people about length, number of stairs, gradients, quality of the roads and paths in a thoroughly suspicious fashion.
It was with some astonishment therefore that I found myself voluntarily organising a walking tour for the British Guild of Travel Writers yesterday, hosted for us by the Blue Badge Guides 2012 Committee. These splendid people gave us a preview of their regular public tours of the East End and the vast construction sites for the London Games, including the information centre that is due to open in the next couple of weeks. I ended up slightly damp but having seen not only the Olympic stadium but Bazalgette's elaborate Victorian Temple of Sewage (still in working order) and with a head full of amazing trivia such as the fact that the Lee River has been put to use to haul barges for construction, saving 170,000 lorry journeys. A great tour and an essential for every Londoner. It might just answer a few of the questions about why the Games are a good thing.
Tours run every Sat and Sun at 11am from Bromley-by-Bow tube station and cost £8 per head; for details, www.toursof2012sites.com.

Blogger in search of an Identity

A few months ago, my friends Alastair McKenzie (Travelling Online) and Jeremy Head (Travelblather) gave a great talk to the British Guild of Travel Writers on Web 2.0, inspiring and terrifying in equal measure. Since then I've been doing my homework. It seemed obvious to me fairly early on that to survive this brave new world, you must blog and tweet, but to be a successful blogger, you need a catchy handle and an angle that makes you stand out from the crowd. And that was where I stuck - until about 4am this morning. So this may be a really bad idea. 4am ideas do have that reputation!

I have been to an awful lot of places in the world and I do tend to attract attention. My size is not small (except in Miami, where I felt positively sylph-like). Small children and old men across the world from Manchester to Mumbai feel it is their God-given right to walk up to me, look at me and say, often in very considered tones, "I think you are very fat." My answer is usually simply "Yes", though I made great friends with some children in Marrakech when I managed to persuade them I was the fattest woman in the world (not true, I wouldn't want to usurp someone else's hardwon title). Some also offer gratuitous advice on going to the gym or diets. Men in Africa and the Caribbean get very over-excited. Women in Europe are self-consciously over-sensitive and wonder about glandular problems, while the English invariably mention Dawn French (God bless Dawn, her company makes great fat lady clothes). But everyone comments. You learn to develop a thick skin and get the joke in first. I'm currently Chair of the British Guild of Travel Writers - it really makes people squirm when I call myself the Guild sofa! It's very funny.

However, digression aside, it seemed to me that while other people are ranting, being grumpy, discussing online travel writing etc with enormous success and great interest, there is a huge and largely silent constituency out there - the single travellers, the over fifties, the overweight, the ones with dodgy knees. As a longterm traveller who has now proudly hit all of those milestones at some point (your turn will come for one or all, if it hasn't already) but is still travelling, it seems to me that it's time to speak out bluntly and honestly about the issues, not as a complaint or a moan or even to try and change minds. It isn't a celebration of overweight or, God forbid, an apology, but perhaps with all the jokes flying about the fat person in the seat next to you on the overcrowded plane, it's time someone talked back. So fat woman travelling...