Maureen Lipman's confessions of a reluctant traveller

It’s an odd thing to admit at the start of a travel piece, but I’m not a great traveller.

My late partner of 15 years made a bucket list when he retired at 62 of every country he wanted to visit and by the time he was approaching 80 he had, with the exception of Belize and Papua New Guinea, ticked them all.

His favourite destination was a cruise to Antarctica on an ice- breaker, which was odd because he was born in Egypt and hated cold weather to the point of heating his house to orchid-growing levels. He rarely if ever took off his heathery tweed jacket with suede elbow patches — and I’m talking indoors.

Somehow though, the ravishing scenery and bouncing coloured light — my words not his — the ice-breaker superseded the gorillas of Rwanda, the peaks of Peru, the plains of Mongolia and the monasteries of downtown Tibet.

Whereas for me a truly enjoyable ice- breaker would be an olive anchois and a spicy Bloody Mary.

His first post-office trip was a six-week trek, alone, around India with a backpack and later he negotiated Japan’s un-translated signs with ease. So it astonished me that in a perfectly civilised coastal spot like Marbella or Mallorca — my choices, naturally — he would get totally lost turning left outside the hotel for a macchiato. He clearly needed the extremes.

He also had a soft spot for Switzerland and Venice, both of which I find sinister. I am happy enough in Lyme Regis or, if you ferry me, the Mutton Lane Inn in Cork.

Maureen Lipman

Maureen packing

My daughter swears that I go into an altered state at airports and while chatting to a nice family from the Punjab I would placidly follow them onto their plane. It is sort of true. I dread packing.

I start early, pile every option onto the bed so that for a week I am sleeping in a charity shop basement. Then, come the night before the flight, I go all parsimonious and excise everything but two bathing costumes , a washed-out ten-year- old T- shirt, a silly pair of floaty trousers and some plastic sandals.

Which means I buy a lot of orange pointy midi-dresses in foreign markets, which live in the guest room wardrobe until the following year when it’s their turn to be chucked out of the case.

This year I’ve had 12 weeks off from my role in Coronation Street to do a play, Rose, which required me to sit on a bench for two hours and be the 20th century.

No pressure at all. I did this for eight weeks and survived the fear, the memory lapses and the woman on the front row five feet away with a ZIP bag, which required testing during my time in the Warsaw ghetto and, of course, enough mobile phone jingles to merit my muttering, “Put it away madam, it hasn’t been invented yet.”

I spoke Rose’s last words at 10.15pm at the second show on the Saturday and next drew breath on a small boat in Marmaris, Turkey, on the Monday.

Maureen Lipman (2)

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