By W. Davis

(abridged сокр.)

If travel writers are to be believed, nowadays it won't do to idly праздно lie on a beach in Spain. No, you have to go snorkeling плавать под водой с маской и трубкой, wind-surfing and shark hunting — preferably in a place no one has heard of. Travel snobbery снобизм is as old as travel itself, but it has become increasingly com­plex. Fifty years ago you simply took yourself off to Cannes in mid­winter and did nothing more strenuous напряжённого than ordering a pink gin in the bar of the Carlton. Today you not only have to race other snob to "undiscovered" spots соревноваться с другим снобом за неоткрытые места, but are also expected to go in for all kinds of dangerous activities.

Neither is easy. Escapist стремящийся уйти от действительности hideouts скрывается don't remain hideouts for long, and in the travel snob's book nothing is worse than arriving a year too late. And there are gruesome отвратительный tales of adventurers returning bruised побитый, battered and badly in need of a holiday. One way around the problem is to make do with just talking about it. Day-dream aloud заметно at the right sort of cocktail parties and you have a good chance of be­coming a Holiday Hero without moving from your desk. Prince Rain­ier is a Holiday Hero as he said that if he had his way he would be on a plane to Alaska because "it is savage первобытная". Prince Charles is a Holiday Hero because some time ago he went off to the Arctic and dived under the ice. Copy подражайте them if you must, but hurry, by next year every­one will be doing it.

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Everybody except me. You can have the North Pole северный полюс, just leave alone my favourite beach in Sicily , will you? I am old-fashioned enough to believe that holidays are meant for relaxation and I don't want to have a lot of trendy ультрамодных activists hang-gliding дельтапланеризма past мимо me, thank you very much.

Escape means different things to different people: if you live in a large, claustrophobic city it may well mean a small Greek island, and if you live on a small Greek island it may mean a large, claustropho­bic city. To many young people it means three months in India ; to some of the very rich it means the "simple life" on an island in the Caribbean or the Pacific. For me, though, escape still means, above all, an island in the sun. It means splashing about in the sea, read­ing, listening to music, drinking wine and lying idly праздно on a beach. Let someone else play the Holiday Hero.

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