By Julia Moore

Cultural exchange programmes should always be supported. Young or old, there is always benefit from being forcibly removed from home and sent to far and strange lands.

The most common example is the teenage rite of passage whereby reluctant offspring are exchanged to be miserable in equally reluctant foreign houses. This magnification of misery invariable includes the host’s extended family - innocents who are dragged into the 2 week nightmare, bullied into taking the captives anywhere remotely interesting. In the league of pointless activities, this (exchange visit) ranks within the top 3, along with ironing, advising children to eat brussel sprouts, and swearing at your printer. On a recent trip to London, an exasperated young teacher (full of hope), was observed, shepherding students, desperately pointing at bits of history, when all they really wanted was 2 hours unfettered browsing in Claire’s Accessories and MacDo.

Other categories of cultural engagement - although claiming to be more upmarket usually end with the same result. Universally, the affluent have always afforded fully guided tours around poor parts of the world. Currently the BRIC nations are visiting the UK to point, laugh and stare in wonder at our industrial revolution theme parks, believing them to be real. The earnest humanitarians, by contrast, enrol on NGO programmes - latter day missionary projects - whereby those with Western comforts impart vital skills to boost local economies. In Phuket, for example, one is never very far from a drama therapy workshop.

Personally, it is never the ‘big picture’ - the temples, the landmarks or birthplaces, which enthrall. We can absorb such elements via history lessons and/or Wikki (Ed. irony alert) - but rather the micro aspects of those foreign lands. Sadly, global consumerism has rendered souvenirs almost obsolete, but look and ye shall find. Recently, we took in a stray kitten, providing the excuse to purchase all the trappings thereof. Cat litter trays, moulded in the shape of a little house is certainly one item to jot down in the cultural notebook of ‘different’. Presumably, a general lack of large gardens en Med. requires the ‘toileting’ area to be made more edifying? But why stop at cats? Why not a similar mechanism for humans? The old style ‘nettie’ (outside toilet) in modern form, as we erect a teepee around ourselves when answering the call of nature. Imagine - France could have retained the hole-in-the-ground system (so beloved of all visitors (irony alert No.2 ), as we unfurl our individualized tent, like some incontinent moth emerging from its pupae. To continue, iconic symbols of culture - handbags for men (becoming rarer, sadly), plastic coins in lieu of real money (that should have served as a warning for Italians) and leaving your l’addition cash unattended in public (my mother could never handle that one). But such cultural gems are not of interest to the age-group who are wrenched, like modern evacuees, from their parental homes - if it does not have the ‘golden M’ symbols, it passes by, un-noticed.

The digital age may, like souvenirs of old, see the phasing out of the cultural exchange sector, the prospect of which has mixed blessings. For some young people, this may be the only experience which removes them from an erstwhile parochial home-life. For others, namely stressed professors, duty-bound host parents and the grumpy subjects themselves - a relief. In the round, not much culture was ever exchanged, I suspect, more imposed, resented and rejected. Any connection to the rise of far-right-ish politics in Mainland Europe? I do hope not.

And as for Erasmus? 15th Century Dutch humanist philosopher and polyglot - interesting biography, had his share of run-ins with the Establishment at a time of religious-secular fervour in Europe. Nothing to do with feline sanitation, although I suspect this has been edited out of history- off to do paper-based research, the old-fashioned way.

**NB - 1st April edition of TRW column (April: Finding Our Other Lives) had a serious of ‘facts’ included in content. In the April Fool tradition, only ONE was true - the Celtic mountain ‘voice’. The acronym title provided the clue: ‘FOOL’ - now you can sleep, sorry.