The Deuce Club, 10.23

Where were we? Ah yes, our guest host: The lovely jewell was generous enough to offer her services this week, and she's put together a fantastic DC for y'all. Thanks, jewell - don't know what we'd do without you!

Well, it’s nearly the end of the tennis season (not to mention a long wedding season for me), and I’m already feeling in a bit of a holiday mood, planning places to go away to in the dull time after Christmas. I wish it would hurry up and get here in some ways, although there’s a fair bit to enjoy between now and then. So perhaps I shouldn’t wish the time away too much.

*It’s always fun planning holidays, before the realities of needing to limit travel time, face one’s phobia of flying, save money, etc. kick in. When you only have a week, do you go somewhere new, or do you go somewhere tried and tested where you know you’ll enjoy yourself? If you don’t like flying (and I don’t), it takes an awfully long time to get anywhere from this silly little island, and do I want to spend two days out of a week’s holiday sitting on a ferry or in a car driving to the Channel Tunnel? Hmm ... probably not!

I think my dream holiday would be more like retirement – a long wander through Europe (paying particular attention to the eastern end), Central Asia and into Russia, then a trip across to America for a few years drifting about the north and Canada. I’d want to poke my nose in to all the small and out-of-the-way places and avoid some of the bigger, more well-known cities. If anyone has any tips for this mythical future trip, please share!

And if we’re talking real dreams, I wouldn’t mind a time machine so I could spend a week in some of the best places in history – Tudor and Regency London, perhaps, Byzantium under Justinian and Theodora, then again when the empire was in decline, Reformation Geneva, classical Athens. I’d probably choose Regency London, if I had to only choose one; it just sounds like a city of the most enormous fun.

Anyway, in the interests of brightening up the long autumn drag, I’m curious to know about your** ****dream holidays. If money or even time were no object, where would you go and why?

(Oh ... and where did I choose to go in real life? Wales. I think I must have a thing for wind and rain.)*