Discovering the Delights of Giving Ideas to "IS"

I first discovered the delights of giving ideas a try while abroad on a working holiday with my twin sister, Helen. At twenty, we set sail for England aboard the P and O ocean liner “Orkneys.” Standing on the deck of this huge white ship on a gray, rainy day, we watched our parents’ colorful umbrella on the quayside was getting smaller and smaller. We would not return for 3 years.

After a wonderful journey, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and visiting fascinating places like Durban, Cape Town and the Canary Islands, we arrived in London. We stayed at the Helena Club at Lancaster Gate, a strict club for young women and a far cry from the luxurious surroundings of the last six weeks. We wandered around London, missing life on board and the friends we had made, completely oblivious to its many delights.

One day, looking for postcards to send home, I saw one with a brilliant blue sea and golden sand, just like the beaches back home in Australia. Impulsively, I told Helen, “We should go there.” There was Newquay in Cornwall on the Atlantic coast of England. Helen responded immediately: Yes, let’s do it. We called the Newquay Job Board and spoke to a great guy who told us which train to take and that he would meet us at the station. We went that night.

We spent a lovely summer in Newquay working at the Grantham Astor Hotel. Helen was a waitress and did a great job of keeping the orders in her head, especially the breakfast orders: egg, bacon, sausage and toast, egg, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, no toast, while I wandered around the kitchen, enjoying myself. with the kitchen staff, preparing easy desserts and, more often than not, curdling the milk for the breakfast coffees.

We stayed in a homey B&B, woke up each morning to the sound of seagulls and the roar of waves, and spent our days off exploring the picturesque seaside towns of Cornwall; my favorite was St Ives, and I tried Cornish pasties and cider. It was more like a vacation than a job.

And to think that we might have missed all of this if Helen hadn’t responded positively to my idea. It was just a fleeting thought and could have been lost forever if Helen had said no. This spontaneous positive response to a random idea and giving it a “try” happened again and again in our three years of travel and led us to do some pretty amazing things that we otherwise wouldn’t have done.