TALKING THE WALK

Tony Noon throws away the Boy’s Book of Wonder and embraces the virtual world.

Helen had just got back from Vegas. Over coffee I told her how much I had enjoyed the night flight over The Strip and asked if she had gone to see the Aussie male strippers at her hotel.

“No , “ she said “ We went to a show at the Luxor “, which was just around the corner.

Loraine and me had already had a look at what was on offer inside the huge pyramid .

There is something very similar, if you don’t know, on the outskirts of Skegness .

Much smaller of course , but obviously more influenced by Sin City than anything gracing the banks of the Nile. Its full of slot machines as you would expect , but I digress.

Helen is a globetrotter. There are increasingly few parts of the globe that she hasn’t trotted

on. We’ve skipped around in Europe a bit , but we’re not on the same airbus. We weren’t in Las Vegas . We weren’t in Tenerife , but that’s where my indulgence achieved critical mass.

I discovered the joy of google maps some time ago in my business life.  Younger , more savvy technocrats had probably been there long before me and worn the cyber tee shirt ,

but  the first time I realised you can pick a location almost anywhere and drill down through the clouds to hover only feet above the actual landscape , I was hooked , and also a little disappointed.

I knew what you could do in the UK and long ago zoomed down to see the hole in my garage roof  which I really must get repaired .

From above my garden looks as impenetrable as an equatorial rain forest , but you can count the stripes on  my neighbour’s deck chairs. Any actual people you see have pixillated faces, just in case they have been caught somewhere they shouldn’t be.

I had never gone international, though, until I tried , just on the off chance, to look at our Indian Sales Office in Mumbai.

At the back of my mind , I had  visions of narrow streets and corrugated roofs. Pots dangling everywhere, of course.  As the clouds cleared ,however, and I zoomed in closer and closer ,

It became apparent that my ”Boy’s Book of Wonder” view of the world might be slightly out of date.  Skyscrapers and elegant parks made Backbay , Mumbai look more like New York .

I was similarly surprised when I started looking closely at China a couple of years ago.

I’m sure the pagodas are there somewhere , but the rapidly evolving cities west of Shanghai looked very much like Europe .  Street View, another joy ,showed motorways and shopping malls which were depressingly familiar.

But Street View brings us nicely back to Tenerife. When Helen took herself to Los Gigantes last year, I asked Loraine to find out exactly where she was staying .

Each lunchtime I plotted a different excursion , then asked Loraine to text the details over to Helen who was surprised and amused by our detailed local knowledge.

I literally “walked” the streets from  the hotel down to the Marina and was able to comment on the shops and bars . I could almost read the menus.

When she got back home we told her how much we had enjoyed our virtual holiday together.

Therein , of course , lies the rub.  Helen likes the terra firma . Often she knows nothing of the places she visits prior to her trip. The excitement for her is the first hand experience.

When we arrange a trip , I  spend weeks studying the area , the lie of the land , even sometimes learning the lingo . With my new(ish)  tools I can see the accommodation before we book . When we had to abort a planned trip to Rome a year or two ago,  I had studied the area where we would have stayed so well , that my memory of the images I saw on Street View are almost as vivid as places I have actually been.

Some might say the devil is in the detail , but he has the good songs too.  I can’t wait to find out where we are “going” next.