Why Purple Tern?

Arctic terns have one of the longest migration paths on the planet. They cover an estimated 2.4 million km in their approximately 30-year life-span. They are built for long-distance travel, and not averse to making extensive detours "to find better feeding grounds or avoid inclement weather".

PT (the author of these blog posts) sympathizes with this lifestyle 100%. She's not sure she believes in totem animals, but if she had one, it would be an arctic tern.

Purple, on the other hand, comes from a well-loved poem by Jenny Joseph. It begins: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple." PT is not an old woman, but she can't help feeling that "old" is waiting just round the corner.

Joseph, having talked about all the outrageous things she plans to do when she's old (to make up for the crushing restraint of life as a responsible adult), says at the end: "But maybe I ought to practise a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised, when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple."

PT intends to practise being purple. So that when she's old, she'll have it down to a fine art.

She wants, in short, to be a Purple Tern...

The Purple Tern blog set out with the intention of documenting the unfolding experiment of a purpler post-work life. It envisaged a twofold endeavour. There would be the local element, as we explored our new home, Sarawak. And there would be the more ambitious side, as we saw how far we could travel with a finite amount of all the things that are needed for a big OE: money, energy, health, environmental "permission", and the tenacity and determination required to subdue the mounting forces of anti-nomadism.

A massive and unexpected wing-clipper, of course, was the covid fiasco...

Three years on, and we're travelling again, although it's still hard to shake off the feeling that things could go covid-wrong at any minute.

"Inner" travel, meanwhile, is documented on The Velvet Cushion; old journeys feature on Vintage Travel; and Purple Tern's predecessor (2010-18) is still available at Travel and Food.

PT is supported in all these endeavours by her indomitable husband and a large green rucksack. (They used to be accompanied by a Small Red Bear, but he absconded in Cordoba in 2020, obviously keen to get back to Sarawak before lockdown. We hope he succeeded...)

Whatever the future shape of travel, we fully intend not to hurry the journey at all.