I can’t help it. The words just tumble out of my mouth. Words that are so ageing and ones that I swore I would never say.
“Well, in my day...” and unfortunately, I continue. I’m aware of the eye rolling from my audience but I’m gripped by a longing to share “when I was travelling...” the cat looks at me desperately, willing me to be quiet “... we didn’t have mobiles phones or the internet...” And so the curtain comes down. It’s the end. It’s all over. I’ve lost them.
Like my eighteen-year-old students who look at me with such frighteningly familiar bored looks on their faces, yawn and then go back to sleep, my audience packs up and calls a taxi home. When one starts a story with “In my day we didn’t have...” you have officially become ‘the older generation’. It’s a slippery slope. Next I’ll be talking about life with only four channels to choose from on the television, a life before voice mail and DVD players, about recording your favourite song off the radio on a Sunday night and of course a life of ‘mixed tapes’ (ask your parents). And don’t get me started on mobile phones...
If you are of a younger generation, then it’ll be hard for you to imagine a life without your thumbs permanently poised on your Blackberry or your quick access email with just a flip of your iPad lid. Imagine no social media, our platform to share our quirky mishaps and photos of delightful moments no matter which part of the world we are in. Photos of an Alaskan adventure brought to your mates in their living room in Yorkshire by way of Instagram or Facebook. But really, truthfully when I travelled around the world, I couldn’t send a quick text to my parents letting them know that I’d arrived safely or a lengthy email full of chat and stories. Those instant moments of treasure that can be shared seconds after it has been experienced through blogs and forums had not been invented then. I had nothing like that. Cup of tea and a packet of Hobnobs, I would sit at the kitchen table with my parents and fail to remember anything from my nine-month trip trekking through various rainforests. It was all a blur. My photos were crumpled at the bottom of my rucksack with my damp socks and they were the only tangible thing I had to show them. Travelling then was hard and for tough people, people who never got scared and faced... oops, I’m rambling. Where was I?
And just to bore you some more but truly emphasise my point, our cameras were not digital. We used a film. A film that if left too long at the bottom of a warm rucksack would spoil and so I had to have my photographs developed there and then and then lug them around in my musty, damp rucksack. And so, on to the advancement of the rucksack. It’s not just technology that has made travelling today easier and safer. The rucksack has matured and with a funky hip belt with ‘lumbar support’, a built-in ventilation system for those sweaty days, an adjustable foam back and waterproof cover, and even a holder for that ever useful ice axe, it is far removed from the cumbersome, uncomfortable pack I had on my aching bones. Hoisting the rucksack from the ground onto my back was like lifting 107 bricks with my bare teeth and then once on my back, I would lean backwards rather precariously at an angle that I would sustain for the whole journey.
To be in my shoes (or hiking boots that made your heels sore and had to be worn around the house for six weeks before you took them travelling with you) you must transport yourself to a time when life was all about leg warmers and Duran Duran, when Gap Years hadn’t been invented and remember two things; my poor parents would go weeks without hearing from me and would frustratingly have to rely on that airmail letter landing on the doormat every other month and the news they received was unfortunately old news as I would have moved on and was maybe even in a different country never mind city.
And then, there is my poor back and aching shoulders where the indentation from the metal back frame from my clunky, uncool rucksack can still be seen. As a middle aged woman now I will never be the same again mentally or physically because from the age of 18 I endured years of backpacking... the old fashioned way.
Charlotte K. Arrowsmith is an English language lecturer at the UAE University, Al Ain.