Here Comes the Fun

Are you getting enough? Bestselling travel writer Ben Aitken wasn't. Increasingly flat and decreasingly zen, he knew that something had to change. Unnerved into action, Ben gave burnout the boot and stress the cold-shoulder by embarking on a whimsical journey into the serious business of having a laugh. He did a pilgrimage in Spain and a cruise of the Baltic. He endured a summer camp in Kent and a theme park in Derby. He injured his nose in Brighton (wakeboarding) and pulled his hamstring in London (ecstatic dancing). And when he wasn't on the road, he searched for merriment at home: by giving bridge a go, the crossword a chance, and gardening a crack of the whip. By incorporating the thoughts and findings of key thinkers and boffins, and by reflecting on less obvious sources of levity like conversation and community, Here Comes the Fun offers a satisfying balance of the playful and profound, the serious and silly, the thoughtful and fun. AUTHOR: Ben Aitken was born under Thatcher, grew to 6ft then stopped, and is an Aquarius. He followed Bill Bryson around the UK for Dear Bill Bryson: Footnotes from a Small Island (2015) then moved to Poland to understand why everyone was leaving. A Chip Shop in Poznan: My Unlikely Year in Poland (2019) is the fruit of that unusual migration. For The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders (2020), the author went on six package coach holidays - Scarborough, Llandudno, Lake Como et al - with people twice or thrice his age in order to see what they had to say for themselves and to narrow the generation gap a notch. The Marmalade Diaries (2022) is the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time, and stems from the author's decision to move in with an 85 year old widow ten days before a national lockdown.