Nick and I first met on a blind date in 1991. We realised at once that we were both preoccupied with dreams of escape from the constraints of ordinary life. We were hampered only by the fact that we had no money, no trust fund, no inheritance. We had to earn enough to give us the chance to taste freedom before we were too old to take advantage of it.
We have been lucky. By conventional measures we have enjoyed reasonably heady levels of career success and financial security. Nick was a managing director at one of the big three US banks, running the top- rated equity sales team in the City. I was a (reluctant) lawyer at one of the top City firms, until I had children and retired, relieved, from the rat race.
We have owned the big house, fully sampled the London lifestyle, eaten in the best restaurants, stayed in the best hotels, travelled the world. But Nick’s career took over our lives, affected every aspect of our time together and almost destroyed our marriage. He has worked so hard that we have barely seen him, leaving in the morning before the children woke and getting home when they were asleep again. Kinvara, our four-year-old, hardly knows him and treats him with suspicion. Gregor and Jasmina, who are 8 and 6, adore him, but have become resigned to his weekends of sleep and conference calls.
We held on, always looking for a way out of this only-half-living way of life. At times it looked as if it would never happen. Conventional thinking threatened to hold us back. But, at last, it has happened. Nick has given up his big City job. He has finally set himself, and therefore the rest of us, free. He was offered the chance to take a sabbatical, to come back into the fold once he had done some travelling, but we both agreed that we would be left umbilically tied to our old life. So we turned that safety net down.
So, 15 long and dogged years later, we are finally ready. On Monday, we set off on an open-ended quest. We are constrained only by the fact that our children will need to go to school again one day, we don’t know where, and that we have not earned enough never to work again.
Our itinerary for the first six months has been meticulously planned. We start in Africa, a continent that we both feel passionately about and which Nick knows well. A gentle beginning in South Africa will lead to a spectacular safari adventure, taking in Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and a lengthy exploration of the remotest parts of Namibia. If we can fit it in, we will slip up to Ethiopia immediately before leaving for an extensive tour of Australia (à la Bill Bryson) and then New Zealand. Our round-the-world ticket will then take us on to South America, where we hope to visit Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Guyana. Sadly, we won’t have time to visit the whole world. Gregor, Jas and Kinvy have to go back to school somewhere, eventually, we reluctantly admit. But we will fit in as much of it as we can, while we can.
It’s an incredible feeling. Scary and fantastic in equal measure. We have sold the house; we have given notice to the schools. We have sold the cars, stored our furniture, pictures, clothes, all our precious things. Nick’s hallowed Twickenham rugby debentures have been promised to favoured friends. The toys have been radically thinned out and discreetly gifted away. The contents of the food cupboard have been handed around our acquaintances. The cleaner has left. The bank has been informed, the insurance has been sorted out. We have partied with our friends for weeks, saying our goodbyes over and over again, realising with a pang that we will be leaving behind all sorts of special relationships that we hadn’t appreciated properly before.
Our parents are managing to appear calm, even enthusiastic, but we know that we will find it agonising to say a similar goodbye to our own children one day in the future, given that we have already infected them with an incurable travel bug. Gregor already knows the globe by heart and can flawlessly recite the 54 countries of Africa. He has gleefully packed away his books. He has no regrets whatsoever about leaving his school, but is concerned about missing his best friend, Edward. Schoolwork? Well, we have decided to give them
all a break. They are young enough to leave the work to one side for a while. A few sums along the way and perhaps a grammatically correct scrapbook will suffice. They will, after all, be subjected to a full-fat learning experience for months on end.
We wonder how we will evolve as a family group. Our feisty marriage has possibly benefited from the distance that a powerful office job creates. How will we cope being together all the time? Perhaps badly given the deterioration in communication we have suffered since Nick has been at home these past few weeks. He has been surprised to witness the reality of life outside the realms of a large international business — “where is the ****ing IT department?” he yells as his internet connection packs up and dies for the last time. He’s outraged that nothing works smoothly in the outside world.
As long as we can hold it together in a vaguely civilised fashion, the children, though, will surely benefit from the time and attention that we hope to be able to give them. A father in attendance, with his mind on his family, at least for some of the time. No homework, after-school clubs, telephone, television.
Actually, we do have a satellite phone that a friend has generously lent us and which means that we can call for help even at the deepest, darkest, most remote moment of the trip. Somewhat embarrassingly really, we have a vast mountain of technological gear — mobile phones, spare SIM cards, a tiny laptop, two cameras, three pairs of binoculars, video camera, leads, cables, plugs, batteries, adapters, chargers. It all fills one of our three bags, while one of the others is stuffed with medication of every variety. Anti-malarials, which are heinously expensive, extra-strong repellent, tummy-bug pills, cream, ointments, syringes, plasters — we even have a large supply of Tamiflu in case bird flu catches up with us or we catch up with it. The children are full of holes, inoculated to the point of needle phobia against every conceivable risk by the lovely people at the Travel Clinic at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
We don’t think that we can fail. Even if we come back and pick up the pieces of our old life, we will at least have looked outside the box. Perhaps we will discover that we are better off inside, back on the treadmill, navigating our way back to the secure and sensible path that we have diverted from. We are at least curious to know the answer to that.
And the children? Well, they, we hope, will have inherited something of the free spirit that has driven us to this point and a little bit of unconventional thinking is always, we think, a good thing.
The rats can race without us
After selling their house, putting careers on hold and taking their children out of school, the Tims family is hitting the road on a year-long adventure. Rachel Tims files their first monthly report