In my chronically peripatetic life in the past, I used to plot my escape almost as soon as I had arrived somewhere. A growing familiarity with a place led to boredom and restlessness, and leaving it was usually the easier option than staying put.
After an employer had put me up in some fancy hotel, be it the Mendana Hotel in Honiara or the Tusitala Hotel in Samoa or the Inya Lake Hotel in Rangoon or the E & O Hotel in Penang or the four-months-long stay at the Gateway Hotel in Port Moresby, not to mention my longest-ever stays of over a year at the Al-Harithy in Jeddah and the Savoy in Piraeus and the Athenium Intercontinental in Athens, I'd get restless after several months in the same room and, on the spur of the moment, ring Reception to send up the bellboy and move me to another room with another view.
Nowadays there are no more bellboys and no more fancy hotels but the need for change is still there and so, again on the spur of the moment, I moved my 'electronic nerve centre' into the hallway where I can see the river on one side and the pond on the other as I browse the web or listen to the radio. As they say, a change is as good as a holiday.
