I'm with Jane Austen. Let's seize the pleasure at once

Tracey realises there's a fine line between spontaneity and being a dickhead

Nicole and the twins in Corfu

There's a fine line between being spontaneous and being a dickhead. Just ask any of my friends. But if the kids on TikTok are anything to go by, spontaneity or living in the moment is still regarded as a Very Good Thing.

At Easter, I met up with Nicole, an old friend from Australia who was briefly passing through the UK to spend two weeks sailing around Corfu.

I'd had a week of bad news; one friend had been diagnosed with cancer, another had found out that her cancer had returned, while another had lost someone close to suicide. Life is short and incredibly precious, so when Nicole suggested that me and my twin daughters fly out to Corfu the following week to join them for a few days, it was both the best part of a bottle of Prosecco and a healthy dose of spontaneity that booked three flights that night.

We spent a heavenly three days sailing around Corfu on a fancy white catamaran, drinking gallons of Aperol Spritz, eating the freshest seafood and catching up in the sun. However, living in the moment is not just about booking a cheeky holiday on a whim.

Spontaneity can be a curse when in naïve hands (i.e. mine). I'm the queen of doing things without thinking them through. My default setting is to say yes and then wing it with my fingers crossed. Like that time I hitched to Bournemouth after last orders in Southampton and had to sleep in a hotel garden. I once booked a flight to Faro without knowing which country it was in and took the wrong currency. And we won’t talk about Berlin. Ever.

Tracey on the River Arno 30 years later

Here’s a fine example of this personality trait. In the early Nineties, me and couple of friends went on an uni field trip to Florence and Milan on the pretext of learning about classical art and modern design. Of course, we used it purely as a vehicle to meet hot Italian men.

Our first bright idea was purchasing a litre of duty free Smirnoff on the ferry and getting slaughtered on vodka Vimtos on the 28-hour coach journey to Italy. It’s safe to say, the coarse language, partial nudity and vomiting that followed did not enamour us to the lecturers or our fellow students. But spontaneity is rife when you're 19 and a dickhead. And I revelled in it. On arrival in Florence, we immediately ditched the group to find our own entertainment.

Hopping between sexy riverside bars on the Arno, we met a group of Italian students and ended up back at their apartment. Francesco serenaded us on his guitar, while Luigi (I kid you not) cooked up midnight spaghetti and we drank cheap red wine from beakers. One of us came away with a kiss. We wandered back to the hotel as the sun rose over the river and did the walk of shame through the breakfast room, like legends.

Photo by Eleonora Altomare on Unsplash

But these are the scenes worthy of a Fellini film, the kind of experience that could never be planned. And if we had followed the rules and went straight to bed after dinner, we would not know what it was like to eat silky spaghetti coated in olive oil, pepper and Parmesan with handsome young medical students in a Florence garret.

One of my favourite films is Before Sunrise, the first in Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy which was set and filmed over twenty years. Ethan Hawke's character, Jesse hops off a train in Vienna with Celine, a French girl played by Julie Delpy, who he met only hours before and had an instant connection. It was a spontaneous decision which resulted in a lengthy romance spanning two decades.

Back in Italy, we were living la dolce vita and met numerous handsome men over the week. One such chap, a lovely man called Luca who we met in Pisa, suggested we join him and his pals in Venice in a few days. On our last night in Milan, propping up the bar drinking eye-watering strong grappa with moustachioed septuagenarians, we decided to take Luca up on his suggestion, ignoring the fact that our coach was leaving for England at midnight the following night.

Photo by Evan Bollag on Unsplash

What could possibly go wrong? The following morning, we took a three-hour train journey and spent the day in Venice.

And we had a ball. We buzzed around the canals on vaporettos, swept around St Mark's Square in cheap Venetian masks, gazed up at the Doge's Palace and ate bowls of cacio e pepe in a backstreet trattoria. Smug as pugs in rugs, we hopped back on the train and high five-d ourselves for our adventures. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong train and found ourselves in Padua, some 250km away from Milan.

Eventually, we arrived back in Milan two hours after our coach had departed. It was 2am, we had no luggage, no money and absolutely no way of getting home. It was about now that the spontaneity of our day trip to Venice started to lose its sparkle. One by one, panic set in as we realised we were effectively “abandoned” in a foreign country.

My mum always told me, if in trouble, ask a policeman. And that's exactly what we did. We went to the police station in Milan Centrale and asked for help. A poker-hot police officer allowed us to spend the night in a police cell (for safety) and even gave us a 1000 lira to get some breakfast the next morning.

Photo by Caleb Stokes on Unsplash

He also suggested we contact the British consul in Milan who would help us get repatriated back to Blighty. The next morning, we thanked the hot cop, spent the lira on crisps and cigarettes and made our way over to the British Consulate General to beg for help.

Now before you go thinking that we just get flown home on the tax payers purse, you would be wrong. Ambassador Roger calls each of our parents to ask them to pay for our flights home. “Hello Mrs Clark, this is Roger here from the British Embassy in Milan” - cue screaming down the receiver. And when I saw my mother’s face at Arrivals in Heathrow that afternoon, I very much regretted the three Jack Daniels and Cokes I had drunk on the flight.

I'd like to say that the incident put me off being spontaneous, but no. Much to my mother's horror, the next weekend the three of us drunkenly caught a ferry over to France for a night out in Cherbourg. As they say, once a dickhead, always a dickhead.