I love flying. I didn’t start traveling properly ’til I was 30 when I fronted a travel show for TV 3 that took me to London, Rome and Vancouver. From there, nothing could stop me. I loved the world. I could see why people went on about it so much. 

One of the joys of New Zealand being at the *** end of the world is that it takes hours to fly anywhere and although for many, a 26 hour flight is their idea of hell, I love the opportunity of being able to read, and read, and read. No dogs to walk, no interruptions, no cell-phones, no dinner to prepare. You can keep your movies and your sound tracks. You won’t find me up the back of the plane with the bad boys and girls, flirting with one another and swilling wine out of plastic cups. No, I’ll be savouring the hours of guilt free pleasure I get from reading.

One of the worst moments in my traveling life was when I went to Cuba and found that I couldn’t buy or trade an English language book for love nor money. Mainly money. The Cubans, and who could blame them, just wanted to see the colour of my greenbacks. Weight restrictions being what they are, I’m never able to bring enough books with me, but I’m always happy to help improve the balance of payments of the countries I visit by spending up large in their bookstores. In Cuba, I was foiled. Still I found out my Irishman was fairly fluent in Spanish and he bought a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry from a garage sale in the centre of Havana and for the remaining days of our trip, he read the poems to me in the Spanish – and then translated it into the English. I think he fudged a couple of words but I was none the wiser and when anything is said with sincerity, it sounds perfectly plausible. 

And I’ve decided that possibly the only thing more pleasurable than reading to oneself is having a mellifluous hunk of multi-lingual gorgeousness reading to you.