Toby Young has narrated this article for you to listen to.
By the time you read this, my son Ludo will be in South America, where he’s gone for what remains of his gap year. He deferred his university place and has been working in a pub since he left school, trying to earn enough money to go travelling. I made the mistake of telling him I’d match whatever he managed to save, imagining he’d struggle to put aside more than £500. Turns out, the little bugger saved more than £5,000! Still, he’s going to need £10,000 to pay his expenses. He’s spending the first four months in Brazil and doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese, so will struggle to get a part-time job, even in a bar. His girlfriend is joining him in four months and they’re planning to embark on a South American tour, beginning with Peru.
If Ludo gets into trouble on his travels, Caroline will blame my ‘free-range’ parenting
For reasons I find hard to explain, I feel more anxious about Ludo going away than I did about my daughter Sasha, who spent her gap year in Mexico. Unlike Ludo, who’s gone with his best friend, she went on her own, and, on the face of it, teenage girls are more vulnerable than teenage boys. That’s not true when it comes to murder – roughly 80 per cent of victims are men – but it’s true of being kidnapped, where the ratio is reversed. Yet I’m more worried about Ludo being abducted than I was about Sasha and have gone through some ‘proof of life’ questions with him: favourite chicken takeaway, favourite Marvel superhero, etc. If I do get a ransom demand, he’s forbidden me to fly out and lead the negotiations since he’s worried the kidnappers will decide that killing him is preferable to arguing with me.
I suppose I should be pleased that he’s adventurous enough to go on this trip. I raised my children not to be snowflakes, encouraging them to jump off cliffs into the sea, cycle to school from an early age, embark on long journeys unaccompanied by their parents, etc. As a general principle I think this is sensible, and it’s turned out well so far – Ludo, in particular, is a bold fellow, unafraid to take risks. But the downside is if he gets into trouble on his travels, Caroline will blame my ‘free-range’ parenting. Sasha speaks Spanish, so in Mexico she could talk her way out of a tight spot, which she frequently did. Ludo will have to rely on facial expressions and hand gestures, which I know from experience can be misunderstood in foreign climes.
My nervousness may also be based on my own experiences of travelling as a young man. At the age of 17, after failing all my O-levels on account of smoking too much dope, I was packed off to live on a kibbutz by my father, who thought a spell of wholesome communal living would do me good. It turned out to be next to the Lebanese border and was heavily shelled on the first night, prompting me to depart the following day. I ended up at another, but was thrown out after a month for making eyes at the daughter of one of the founders. I decided to make my way to Egypt and converted what money I had left into the local currency, not realising it was virtually worthless. That meant that when I got back from my trip to Luxor I was unable to buy a plane ticket to London. I was then robbed at gunpoint by a policeman, leaving me virtually penniless.
I went to the British embassy and asked a friendly official if there was any chance of being deported. He advised against it: ‘It’s not the sort of thing you want on your record.’ He suggested that I ask my parents to wire me the money for a plane ticket. I decided to try that, but in those days you had to go a post office to make an international call and the waiting list was seven days. In the meantime, I got a job working for a shady character at the Cairo bus station who gave me a small commission every time I managed to persuade some unsuspecting tourist to take a room at his brother-in-law’s hotel, which made the half-built affair in Carry On Abroad look like the Taj Mahal. I was allowed to sleep on a mattress in one of the corridors, which saved me having to rough it but didn’t do much for my personal hygiene. The showers were reserved for paying guests.
Then my fortunes changed. One of the pigeons I was tasked with ensnaring at the bus station turned out to be an evangelical Christian and when I told him my hard-luck story he marched me into a bucket shop and used a couple of traveller’s cheques to buy me a plane ticket. Later that day, I was back in Blighty, having had what I considered a lucky escape. I subsequently tracked down my Good Samaritan, repaid him and told him he might have saved my life. I just pray Ludo is more sensible than I was.
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