Sonja: It’s not that I have actual travel urges right now. More like knowing that I could travel if I wanted to

Prunie: What’s that spectator sport phrase called again…armchair travelling, or something?

S: I’d prefer a magic carpet ride myself

P: That’s cos you’ve kept up your yoga practice

S: What do you mean?

P: Well, you can keep a straight back and sit in one position for a good few hours

S: A few hours wouldn’t be enough for the kind of travel I like…one needs time in a place to feel it. But thanks for the compliment about my posture and agility Prunie

P: I’m remembering meeting Thandi’s grandma outside her home amongst the rolling hills, as the crow flies not too far from the wild coast. She sat with her legs out in front of her, busy with weaving a basket. Thandi said she could sit for days like that.

S: Can Thandi weave like that?

P: Sore point at the moment, no…it was never her thing, but she’s becoming interested and is planning to do something about it.

S: Sigh! Now you’ve got me all dreamy, and in that landscape. Walking, walking. Tasting, listening, seeing, feeling the wind in my hair, slowing. Deep Sigh!

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go right now?

P: That feels like one of those questions like if you could have dinner with anybody, who would you choose?

S: OK, so combine the two – travel anywhere, destination wide open, dinner with anyone. Who and where?

P: You mean besides down the road, right here with you, right now?

S: Oh Prunie, you dahling. But it’s a sumptuous question right?

P: Mmm… I think honestly, wherever I travel, what I’d most love is to sit with the indigenous grandmothers of whatever land I’m in, around a fire, eating together and me just listening. Listening, with an inbuilt capacity to understand their speaking in their own mother tongue

S: So not the Eiffel Tower dinner with Prince Charming then?

P: Honestly Sonja, how could Prince or Princess Charming ever compare to cooking on a campfire in the mountains or next to a river with one’s Beloved

S: Fair point. Though I do like a bit of fine wining and dining myself. I think I’d have dinner with that gorgeous Trans-gender actor from Sense8.

P: Is that the very sexy series you couldn’t stop talking about last year? Are you still re-watching it?

S: Its creative research Prunie. My style fashionista self gets inspiration from costume design in creative endeavours

P: Oh, so now it’s all about the costume design. Maybe you should rather have dinner with the costume designer from the series then. And you could choose to time travel to any one of those fabulous destinations from the series.

S: I thought you didn’t watch it

P: I didn’t. But you talked about it so much last year. You could say I watched it through your eyes.

S: Ok ok enough already. Seriously Prunie. What land would you venture to?

P: My dream life and my flying dreams are the extent of the travel adventures I want right now Sonja. Just send me regular postcards with wine and coffee stains from wherever you visit.

S: Or Yak butter tea, or chai or hot chocolate from  Mexico or champagne from Champagne, mint tea from the Middle East or water from Middle Earth, or pomegranate juice from a village in…

P: Ok I’m salivating…while also realising these kinds of longings have got us into the $h#t we’re in globally, environmentally, through wanting to taste everything from everywhere

S: Yes I know. But dreaming is free, doesn’t cause harm or use resources, with the added benefit of feeding the imagination.

P: I think it was when I was re-reading Isabelle Allende’s delicious book Aphrodite, that I read that one or other ancient noble people wanted peacock tongues as part of their fine dining experience

S: How come peacocks didn’t go extinct then?

P: Too severe a diet, perhaps sparsely and beautifully arranged peacock tongues on a gold plate, even if extremely tasty wouldn’t go a long way to filling a potentially gluttonous-prestigious appetite, even a few hundred years ago

S: Yowzers Prunie, what a species we are, us humans

P: Sigh!

S: Sigh!

FOOTNOTE: reference is made to a book and a TV series

*Aphrodite: the love of food & the food of love (Allende, 1998)

**Sense8 series created by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, Production companies  include the Wachowskis’ Anarchos Productions (replaced by Lana and her wife’s Venus Castina Productions in the second season), Straczynski’s Studio JMS, and Georgeville Television, with Unpronounceable Productions having been set up specifically for this show. June 5, 2015 –June 8, 2018