My grown-up gap year by Susan, 51

THE closer I get to home, the grumpier I become. Our eight-week romp round Europe – 13 countries, Germany and France twice – is almost at an end and we are heading to Brighton, for a week’s respite, before flying to Africa.

I am looking forward to seeing my sister, to being able to phone friends and family without incurring the national debt of a small nation and, of course, the summer sales. Are smock tops definitely out?

But I don’t want to come off the road. There have been some scary moments – not least the bill we got for an emergency repair to the camper van. We have, predictably, spent more than we should have, mostly on wine. I miss shouting at John Humphrys in the morning, so I shout at my poor husband instead.

But I don’t want to stop moving. I don’t want to fall back into the comfortable routine of my normal life, even for a week, even in Brighton.

I was desperately searching a newsagent in Amiens yesterday for an English language newspaper, when I came across a section coyly called “seniors”.

A good looking fiftysomething blonde, in a carefully cut swimsuit, smiled out at me from under the banner “Notre Temps”, which even I, who last studied French when Bowie was still Ziggy, understood as “Our Time”.

I suppose this is my time. My children are grown and happily making their way in life (thanks to the love of two good women, it has to be said).

I have a lovely flat, even if it is still half owned by a building society, and I have passed through the menopause almost unscathed. (Actually, that is a lie. My menopause was hell for me, and hell for anyone who came within spitting distance, but I digress.)

I am a reasonably healthy, reasonably well-off, not-bad-for-her-age woman in her early fifties.

I should be settling down into my third age with a serenity and wisdom that only comes from having lived through punk rock and Maggie Thatcher.

But I can’t; I won’t. I don’t want to get old. I don’t want to smell of wee, or bore people to death with my tales from a time before the internet. I don’t want spend my last five years dribbling in a nursing home. I don’t want to die.

A few weeks before setting off on this adventure, I asked my long-suffering GP why I couldn’t settle down into middle age; why I had to keep moving.

She smiled, awkwardly, and then said with a sigh: “Maybe you are trying to stop the ageing process,” clearly thinking I was a deluded fool. She was right, on both counts.

My gap year is not about meeting interesting people, or learning about new cultures, though I am doing both. It is not about taking time out to re-evaluate my life, though that will be the inevitable result of six months on the road.

No, this adventure is about me going back in time, trying to recapture that sense of danger, the thrill of unseen possibilities that makes adolescents believe they are immortal, no matter how reckless their behaviour.

I have regressed so much that I am wearing kirby grips to keep my too-long fringe out of my eyes. The last time I wore them I was in 3A. I have even considered smoking again, but luckily the tabac doesn’t stock Number 6.

Of course my efforts to hold back time are doomed to failure. I will get old, I will smell of wee and I will die. But before I start claiming my free personal care, I am going to have a ball.

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