How to get the best out of your travelling

I’m back, after a few days out of circulation, and this morning I took the tube to work. Having forgotten to take my new book with me (I’ve not been reading much recently, and now feel, of all things, guilty) I picked up a copy of Metro.

Starting at the back, I soon found Geraint Jones’ column covering the England cricket team’s tour of Pakistan, wherein the following little gem stood out.

“Islamabad is a lovely city and is only 50 years old. There is a lot of beautiful architecture, the hotel has a 42inch plasma TV and we can relax by enjoying our Playstations and watching DVDs.”

Let’s do this bit by bit.

“Islamabad is a lovely city and is only 50 years old.”

So far so good. The repetition of “is” seems slightly childish, but I’m not here to criticise Geraint’s prose. It’s just nice to know he appreciates the city and has learnt a little of its history.

“There is a lot of beautiful architecture,”

Again, a little childish, but again, great to see him looking around and seeing new and exciting things in a country which few from England visit.

“[…] the hotel has a 42inch plasma TV”

From the same sentence as that about the architecture, so the connection seems tenuous. Let us, however, give him the benefit of the doubt. We’ve all watched TV in a hotel, and it’s nice if they have a swanky one.

“[…] and we can relax by enjoying our Playstations and watching DVDs.”

This, the third part of Geraint’s sentence, really makes you wonder about the early information we received about Islamabad. He doesn’t care at all, does he? He just chucked it in there to make him and the team seem interested in their surroundings, but then spoiled it by immediately enthusing over the TV, PS2 and DVDs.

Furthermore, while one does indeed watch a DVD, how does one “enjoy” a Playstation? It’s obvious what he means, but “enjoy” doesn’t sound right at all. He means, of course, “playing with”, but even Geraint is self-aware enough to realise that this sounds pretty dismal when describing a group of 25-35 men travelling in a strange land.

The thing is, I can see how it would be like this, particularly if you’re a famous cricketer in a cricket-mad country with well-documented “security issues”. It’s not so much the fact that they go to a far-off place and find their entertainment primarily in computer games rather than the place, its people and its culture. It’s the pathetic disingenuousness of fluffing us with a sentence-and-a-half about Islamabad’s age and architecture before whispering the sad – yet predictable – truth.

Geraint, hang your head in shame.

You’ll need the practice anyway, with all the sitters you’ll be dropping this winter.

Now excuse me. I gotta go put some water in Artegall’s momma’s dish.