Quality | 2010.08.31
And they call it a holiday | Madeleine Bunting
This bizarre, expensive practice of upping sticks and heading somewhere strange – why bother?
How would you explain summer holidays to a Martian? You could point them to travel supplements, pictures of idyllic empty beaches, sunsets, charming restaurants and friendly locals. You could talk about the idea of doing as little as possible, spending hours over lazy lunches, sharing quality time with your loved ones. You could pull out the family photos and videos, showing those priceless moments of togetherness. In fact, the Martian might be bemused by the disproportionate amount of space these holiday photos take up. It makes your family life look like one wonderful long beach picnic.
But if the Martian\'s questioning became more determined, you might have to admit that the sunkissed happy images are not the whole story. You might have to start by mentioning the normal nightmare of air travel – crowded airport-cum-shopping malls, being squeezed into seats to be charged small fortunes for stale sandwiches. Or you might find yourself trying to explain why there are never photos of the holiday traffic jams, the car breaking down in the middle of nowhere – events that are unfortunately every bit as memorable as those framed on the mantlepiece.
In fact, this year seems to have had more than its fair share of holidays going disastrously wrong: the tourists stranded by holiday companies going bust; the volcanic ash saga that caused havoc with Easter holidays; and the British Airways strikes. As one weary friend texted when stranded in Portugual with her family and watching the costs of a weekend break soar, it "makes you question what a holiday is for".
The irony is that, while holidays are perceived as all about relaxation, neither the actual travel nor the immediate periods prior to departure and after return are remotely relaxing. Imagine all the paraphernalia of family life and then ask yourself why on earth we pack it all into bags for two weeks ... only to find ourselves short of the essential toy, game, sun hat, flip-flops, beach towel, body board, that a distraught child absolutely cannot holiday without. Then everything is packed up and brought home for mountains of washing.
Every year, I marvel at the process of holidaying. Because despite everything you can possibly dredge up against this bizarre practice of upping sticks and heading somewhere unfamiliar, we love holidays. Many of us invest considerable financial resources – a holiday for a family of four in Turkey in August is, on average, £2,000 a week – making it one of a family\'s biggest one-off expenditures. (David Cameron, urging us to holiday at home, take note: on average UK holidays are even more expensive.)
But even more significant than the money is the emotional investment. We project huge expectations on to our holidays – they are the recompense for the inadequacies of the rest of our life. It is the one point in the year when we get a free hand to design our fantasy of a perfect life. No constraints of geography, no grimy requirements to earn a living, or get the kids to school. So we indulge ourselves in the beachside apartment, or potter round the English cottage garden where, but for the mortgage, we would like to live. We sail round islands, climb mountains, spend time playing with the kids, reading for pleasure.
Most of all, we slip loose the tyranny of time: we stop rushing, we abdicate that sense of drive and purpose (the next deadline, report, presentation) that is promoted in the west as essential to a meaningful lifestyle. Instead, we rediscover something of the aimlessness of the small child\'s experience: we let ourselves potter about and dawdle. We look back with satisfaction on days in which we have done staggeringly little. And, in the process, we find ourselves becoming much, much happier.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mer-holidays-stranded-tourists
