MY FRIEND Marianne was walking the West Highland Way this week. There are women for whom Goretex has the soft caress of cashmere, driving wind and torrential rain and the rugged landscape of Scotland in winter holds the sumptuous appeal of a sun-dappled beach and who view the prospect of a 95-mile hike as others would a shopping promenade.
Marianne, sadly, is not one of those women. I'll wager no "fleece" has ever peeked inside her wardrobe, which is why the occasional thought of her trudging through the worst seasonal weather so far has added greatly to my own staycation.
As the
rain hammered the window pane, the wind howled around the house, stripping off the last of the autumn leaves, I would, once in a while, look up from my book, lay down my steaming coffee mug and gaze out the window. The image of her stoically trudging in mud-laden boots up the banks of Loch Lomond appeared as if projected on to the window, and it couldn't help but make me smile.
Not, I must add, to gloat at her discomfort, but to savour my own cosy comfort.
There are times, rare though they may be, when your own home can take on the languid, luxurious quality of a hotel suite. Why fly off to a distant city for a mini-break when you can avoid the flying, skip the tourist trudge and cut straight to the long lie-ins and lounging on the sofa in front of the TV? I had planned to do so much this week. There were leaves to clear up, a new book to research, a computer to get to grips with (I have finally decided that while Luddites may be as cool as dinosaurs, they are just as dead in this techno-climate) but, instead of doing any of these tasks, I have passed them by in favour of retreating on to the sofa with that life-raft of modern relationships: the DVD box-set. As an early fan of Jack Bauer, I tired a few years ago of his shouty freneticism and so decided to skip the past two seasons. Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder and, as I type from the kitchen table, I'm eight hours into season seven of 24, having already lived through all 24 episodes of season six.
My wife and I have started imagining how Bauer, CTU's top agent and torturer-in-chief, would deal with domestic crisis. Screw up his tea and he's liable to pull an automatic weapon, kick you off your chair and scream: "ONE LUMP OF SUGAR – ONE LUMP – WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" Then torture you for your Pin number so he can go off and buy a tea caddie.
I've got so lazy this week that after three or four episodes I began to dread the point where I would have to get up off the sofa and change the disc. One afternoon I couldn't even be bothered to do that and instead surfed through all the channels, way up to the barren tundra of BBC Parliament, which is how I discovered the one thing that could improve my fabulous staycation: QVC was advertising the "Slanket". Picture the scene: wrapped up in your woollen blanket you have then have to unwrap your self to reach the remote control. Not anymore: the Slanket is a blanket with sleeves and, frankly, it appears to be the greatest invention since penicillin. Bruce Willis has even got one, it seems.
But, like Banquo's ghost, there was always the sodden spectre of Marianne, who, along with other staff from Hotel du Vin, is raising money with every weary step for Colin Montgomerie's cancer charity, Elizabeth Montgomerie Foundation – named in honour of his mother, who died from lung cancer in 1991 – and who, I now realise, I haven't even sponsored. And I now must, for just as the starving of Africa can inspire you to enjoy every morsel, so her exertions have simply magnified the joy of my indolence.
