What were my wife and I thinking when we bought 1000 places to see before you die? We’re over seventy, buying from secondhand bookshops and go every year to the same place for a week’s holiday. Our exchange rate might afford a holiday in Zimbabwe, excluding the Vic Falls.
No, when I have my next children (buying this book may be the start of the impossible dream) I shall be changing their reading material. No more Flubby and the Marshmallows, but big books, books that open a world of islands, animals and cities. Start early: this author probably began at school or dropped out of college and never looked back, especially when there was money to be made out of it.
So what’s to be done with the thousand pages lying in front of me? I don’t return secondhand books and ask for the money back, at least not to a charity shop. My ability to hack into someone’s crypto vault, marry a rich widow or work for the Lotto puts easy money out of reach. Using this brick as a doorstop will serve only as a reminder of where we are not, and turning each destination page into a paper plane just recycles my reality. Of course I could embrace it, hunker down in the Lay-Z-Boy, Google and atlas at hand, and pretend I am enjoying “Armchair Destinations”. But when my inventiveness in planning different “Round the world in Eighty Stays” has turned my face green, how will I enter the Pearly Gates?
But what if…? 1000 places to see after you die. If the world is my oyster, why not death? No one’s yet reported on it, Trip Advisor has no entries nor have its sights ever been seen. The fields of Elysium await the attention of a world hungry for vistas unknown. No trip of fantasy this: if you do not believe such places exist, death’s waiting to reveal them. Knowing a selected few beforehand helps: you don’t want to miss out…tickets and time might be limited.
And after my 1000 places… has made its millions, that secondhand buy will be just what I need.
