One Hump or Two?

When I was at school, I once became obsessed with the idea of riding on a camel. I'm not entirely sure why this happened – perhaps I had been reading a novel or other book that was set in Morocco or somewhere, or possibly I'd just fallen in love with Lawrence of Arabia. Riding a camel became something I simply had to do, and I can remember writing to my French penfriend at the time, telling him that this was my life's ambition. (n.b. wasn't it always delicious fun having penfriends when you were at school? I remember that one of mine had the somewhat inauspicious and rather silly (to we English schoolboys, at any rate) name of Michel Prat, but I now wonder whether he is the well-known French author of the same name).

Anyway, back to the camel. A friend of mine who kept two Afghan hounds in his apartment (he was slightly older than me) once showed me a photograph of his mother riding a camel in Tunisia. I was madly jealous of my friend in the first place – his mother was glamorous and mad, and had dyed her hair bright blue when it wasn't even fashionable to do so (and no, I'm not talking about a blue rinse here – this was a vivid, electric blue). She owned a fashionable 'boutique' in Nottingham (as trendy shops were called in those days), drove a sports car, smoked French cigarettes, and had a Spanish boyfriend who was half her age. She represented everything to me that was bohemian, artistic and eccentric. I loved that woman and when I saw the photo of her sitting atop a camel in the desert, blue hair flashing in the scorching sun, I loved her even more, and was even more jealous of my friend.

I so wanted to ride a camel myself, but how was I – just a poor working-class kid from the back-streets of Naples – ever going to achieve something as unreachable as that? It was an impossible dream. And then one day many years later, when I was visiting my daughter in Gibraltar and had taken a day-trip from Tarifa to Morocco, I had my chance. We had taken a little tour into the outskirts of Tangiers to view the endless white sand dunes that mark the beginning fringes of the vast Sahara, and the tour bus stopped in a remote lay-by. We were all herded off the bus to be confronted by a group of bedraggled berbers standing by three rather scraggy-looking camels. Our guide informed us that for the princely sum of 10 dirhams (about 50 pence) we could ride the camels. I surveyed the scene: The men looked bored; the crouching, ruminating camels likewise. I watched the first three from our party of tourists excitedly clamber into the saddles, and then watched as the beasts, moaning loudly, heaved themselves up into a standing position and were led by their robed masters around an area roughly the size of a small duck pond, before returning to the original spot for a brief photo session.

It was all too ridiculously phoney to be treated with any enthusiasm, and so when I was asked if I wanted to hand over my money and take my turn, I declined. I recognized the scene as exactly the same as the one in the photograph with the blue-haired diva, oh so many years ago – and all of a sudden, the whole idea lost its glamorous appeal. I re-boarded the air-conditioned bus feeling that a part of my childhood had been stolen from me. I could have achieved that impossible dream after all, but at what cost to my self-esteem? No thanks.