Mid-July, traditional family holiday time in our little region, though we’ve all become so cosmopolitan that we’re taking several ‘leisure breaks’ a year. But for families with children, the old habit of a summer week or two away still pertains – though how and why it does passes all understanding.
You remember how it was. Young marrieds with small children – all of us fast friends and someone on a Saturday night out proposes: “Why don’t we all take a holiday house together in Donegal?”
That July turns out to be the wettest on record. Sky and sea are an identical leaden grey. The rain drips like tears off the fuchsia hedges and the nearest shop is a mile away. Your friends’ children (whose rearing leaves much to be desired) whinge and squabble, while yours clings to you like a limpet whimpering “I want to go home”.
Wives and mothers adhere erratically to the ‘cooking and clearing’ rota. Husbands and fathers hive off, fishing, golfing or walking the windswept beach, invariably and unapologetically returning late via the local pub. Making meals for faddy adults and picky youngsters on facilities more primitive than your own is a nightmare. Fresh-caught mackerel stare with reproachful eyes out of a bucket and inevitably, you draw the short babysitting straw on the night scheduled for the holiday blow-out in the fancy restaurant 20 miles away. While puddling dishes in a sink you think longingly of your dishwasher back home and resolve, “never again.”
The Loving Spouse and I managed to live equably for 50 weeks of the year. All our spectacular rows were conducted on holiday. Tensions began to manifest themselves from the moment we decided on our destination. I was responsible for travel and accommodation matters. He looked after the luggage. “Remember dearest when you’re packing that I’ll have to carry it.” The numberless pairs of shoes I sacrificed for that man…
Considering that I took geography as my major subject at college, I have a very poor sense of direction. We stood on every street-corner of every city we ever visited, me arguing, with the map turned round the wrong way. Things came to such a pass once that we tore the map in two, halved our cash and set off in opposite directions. Also, he had a habit of suddenly veering into side streets to explore, while I walked on talking to myself, presuming he was still beside me. But it was due to him that we discovered all sorts of serendipitous joys, like the artisan cobbler up an alleyway in Florence who made bespoke shoes of such beauty I almost wept. And he talked to people. I’d come back from the shops and find he’d elicited an entire life-story from some chance-met person.
I’m a prescriptive kind of sightseer who likes a planned itinerary with frequent coffee stops. He had an infinite capacity to endure beyond exhaustion. He’d be up, sprightly as a box of birds at the scrake of dawn, anxious to pack as much as possible into the day, while I’d have given anything for another hour’s respite from the relentless round. Every museum and gallery was a marathon. Saturated with post-impressionists or Greek statuary I’d sit on a succession of benches cooling my martyred feet on the marble floor.
We fell out every evening over where we were to eat. I like to be sure of my vittles and, in the course of our peregrinations, would tentatively suggest, “This place looks good. Shall we book for dinner tonight?” “We might find somewhere nicer,” he’d say, striding on. Which is all very well till it’s past 9pm, your stomach’s clinging to your backbone and you end up in a pizzeria not speaking to each other.
Arguably, the worst holiday we ever had was the year we motored the length and breadth of Wales in an ancient VW Beetle with dickey wipers and Daughter Dear, aged four, in the back. It poured without ceasing, the scenic beauties were swathed in mist and we hit a succession of B&Bs straight out of Royston Vasey. There was a bank strike and nobody would accept our cheques. (This was pre-credit cards and the hole-in-the-wall.) We headed for the ferry on the smell of our last tenner’s worth of petrol with the child of a broken marriage howling in the back.
According to a recent poll, the chief constituent of a perfect holiday is ‘good company’. A moot point. Our best ever was the year he went to Canada for a month to visit his folks and I went to South Africa to visit mine. Returning, we ran towards each other like Cathy and Heathcliff…
