¡°Take some condoms and don¡¯t get a tattoo.¡± These, apparently, were my last words to my eldest son as he set out on his pre-university gap year in the 1990s. Like so many words of wisdom, they now seem rather dated. Nearly every other person these days sports a tattoo.

Moreover, just as marriage guidance counsellors sometimes get divorced or racing tipsters have off days, my own track record on gap years does not bear examination. I backpacked nowhere. I built no schools and bungee-jumped off no towers in the developing world. And I certainly faced no dangers or dramas that would improve in the telling in the years to come. Instead, I worked as an accountant in the City of London.

No words can quite convey how awful that was. On arrival, we were issued with four different coloured pencils. There was a dress code that was stricter than school. (Waistcoats could be dispensed with in the summer; bowler hats could be worn only by partners and senior staff.) Most days consisted of calling figures to each other as we audited various firms¡¯ accounts. Different types of ticks had a particular kind of significance. The most excitement I had was playing a very minor part in running a common tax fiddle under which the wealthy inhabitants of farms in genteel spots would put the farm in their company¡¯s name and deliberately run it at a loss to offset the tax liability on the company¡¯s profits.

I loved, however, being in London, and on a few occasions I found myself asleep at the end of the District Line instead of getting off at Mansion House. And I shall always treasure the look of appalled horror as I announced to my boss that I was leaving and going to read history and politics.

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My words always seemed empty to me over the years as I pep-talked or enthused about gap years to generations of students setting off on these adventures. ¡°Look,¡± I would tell them, ¡°you pass as an adult (we both know that the jury is still out on that one). You are not lumbered with husbands/wives/partners/children/mortgages/three weeks¡¯ annual holiday, to say nothing of middle-age spread. God does not deal you a hand like this again.¡±

As I approached 70, however, I began to realise that I had that rare thing in life: a second chance. I was now virtually retired and the recipient of various pensions. My children were settled and I was the smiling possessor of five grandchildren. I lived on my own and could rent out my home (whose mortgage was now paid off). I had recently noticed faint stirrings of that spirit that moved me, as a student coming across a sign that pointed one way to Greece and the other to Bulgaria, to simply toss a coin. I began to wilt after correcting university essays for more than 40 years and writing for the nine-millionth time in the margin: ¡°Check the difference between its and ¾±³Ù¡¯²õ.¡± But I also realised that, as age was racing up on me, I soon would not have sufficient stamina for a gap year. It was, in the immortal words of that Elvis hit of my youth, Now or Never.

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I have become a gap year bore. I enthuse to everybody ¨C family, relatives, friends, people at parties and in the queue at the village shop, to say nothing of complete strangers. I realised that in the coming months there would be a few moments of doubt, when even a week at Butlins at Minehead would seem appealing. I have now got myself into a situation where backing down would be an unbearable humiliation. In a strange reversal of roles, my eldest son tried to counsel me: ¡°Do you really know what you are doing?¡± (He did not think he needed to warn me about getting a tattoo or forgetting to take condoms.)

A plan has begun to emerge but has been subject to many revisions and changes of heart: France, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, India (working there on an educational project), Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Australia (working there as a fruit picker), New Zealand, the West Indies, Canada, the US and then home. I intend to travel rough with the occasional burst of semi-luxury and to use every mode of transport from jet plane to walking. I will let the house for a year, so there cannot be any reduction in time.

The reaction to my plans has been a mixture of envy, incredulity and scepticism. ¡°Do you think you will make it?¡± I am constantly asked. The truthful answer is that I have my fingers crossed.

I am still debating some important details. Backpack or suitcase? (I have a fantasy, very unlikely to be realised, of taking a Gladstone bag to Gladstone on the Queensland coast.) Is it best to grow a beard and save on shaving equipment (last time I tried, I began to look a little like Santa Claus)? Will my Picasso Guernica T-shirt still cut it?

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I plan to throw a large party and depart in style the next day, using my bus pass.

John Kirkaldy is a part-time associate lecturer in history at the Open University.