The wander bug
I very first caught the wander bug towards the back end of the 1980s. I don't mean the wanderer bug; I got that back in the late 1960s. So, what is the wander bug? It's when you get the itch to travel places, see other countries, breathe in the atmosphere, try the many different types of food on offer, fly on a Jumbo Jet, ride in a foreign taxi, get squashed riding on an overcrowded overseas bus, all those and more. I have been to many different countries since the late 1980s, yet it all started quite innocently when I took a flight out of Lydd Airport in Kent over to Jersey in the Channel Islands in the summer of 1988. I will never forget that time. It was my first time flying and it was a 52-seater propeller-powered aeroplane belonging to Dan-Air. Locally, we jokingly called it Dan Dare but, if you don't think that is amusing, here's a couple of truths about that trip. Firstly, a flock of sheep had to be ushered off the runway before the plane could take off (Lydd ai...