Stirring

I was flipping through Vogue the other day, which featured women who have bucked the home-bodies convention and undertaken extensive travels, like Gertrude Bell, apparently known as the "uncrowned Queen of Iraq", who explored the Middle East with Lawrence of Arabia. Women who have undertaken wild travel, spent years travelling around South America in jeeps, trekked around Cuba with husband and five-month-old child in tow.

And suddenly, I'm really itching desperately to be out on the road again. I yearn to travel. And I have my December holidays to play with. But I'm yearning not for a tame, bread-and-butter, plain vanilla city tour of established countries in Western Europe. Instead I'm longing for something with at least a little hint of excitement in it, if I can't go for a full-blown wild-adventure travel.

Reading about these travelling women has reignited that restlessness, always rumbling just beneath the surface of my daily life, that has driven me all my life. Above all, I want to move. To keep on moving, rolling under the stars, standing still only enjoy the breeze, to breathe in the green smell of fresh grass after the rain, but to never become petrified.

I can imagine living with any of a number of guys. I'm fairly easygoing, and am used to sharing my space with different people over the years, so I can imagine setting up home with any boy really.

But when I think of that right person who will come along, and the life that we'll lead together, in my mind, I see us walking hand in hand, yes, cheesily along the beach at sunset, but also along streams and waterfalls in a rainforest, or in crammed bus careening along dusty African dirt paths, exploring the streets of Rio, undertaking risks and adventure together.

Of course I am not only looking for any adventuring boy. There must be more to a boy than that, and the wandering aspect doesn't have to be the main part of his personality, as long as the boy is willing traveller.

Maybe someday a boy will come along who will convince me that what I Really want is a still life in sterile suburbia - a house with a white picket-fence, with two cars, a dog, and 2.1 kids. In fact, I'm Waiting with amusement to see that happen, it's a challenge I throw out to Life. You want to see this girl's life and dreams buried? Come and get me.