How do you holiday?

‘Can we have a proper holiday this year, Mum?’ said James.

‘Huh? A proper holiday?’

‘Yeah, you know…one that isn’t some last minute panic.  A proper, thought-about, planned, booked holiday, where we don’t argue, where nobody’s stressed… Abroad. Somewhere hot but with air conditioning.’

Ah. 

Chilly Cornwall

We have a bit of a problem when it comes to holidays.  I love doing and seeing things that are a bit different, out of the norm, a little extreme even.  I dream of the Himalayas, of galloping on camels across deserts, of flying for hours and getting off the plane in a place so very different from rural Somerset that it takes my breath away.  Adrian, on the other hand, is a cautious traveller.  

Every time I suggest a destination, he cites excrement, war, terrorism, plague, sodomy, open drains, raw sewage, excrement, kidnapping, torture, excrement, stomach bugs, sunstroke and…excrement.  Whenever he suggests a destination I yawn.  Unfair?  I give you Belgium.  Not that I have anything against Belgium per se.  I mean, Belgium does great chocolate and I’m sure the beer is superb. It has some very pretty cities. Good frites.  But, for a summer holiday? 

Chilly Northumberland

‘Well…’ I say to James. ‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Morocco,’ he says. ‘But Dad won’t like it.’

We look at one another and sigh.

‘He won't. Definitely not. We could go kayaking in Poland?’ I try. ‘Or how about snorkelling in Croatia?  He’s keen on Croatia.’

James shakes his head and a look of resignation comes over his face. ‘I really would love to go to Morocco.’

And I think about how he’s fourteen and time is running out.  How many more years are there when he will want to go on  holiday with me?  And then I thought about how I'm always jetting off here, there and everywhere for work (as is Adrian) and poor James is stuck behind and, bless him, never complains (though maybe that's because he's not too keen on having colonics in Italy or pretzeling himself in Spain). And I think about our past holidays which have been fine but a bit haphazard, a bit last-minute, a bit flung together on a wing and a prayer. And I look at my credit card and think...sod it. 

Sweltering Spain.

And then it hits me.  ‘How about if just you and I go?’ I say.  ‘And then maybe you and Dad could go to…’

‘Germany!’ he says, eyes lighting up.  ‘We could go to bars and war museums.’ He knows his father so well.

And I thought Adrian might baulk at this idea but he grasped it like a drowning man. With unseemly haste, actually.  

So I told my friend Rachel what we were doing and she looked wistful.

‘I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco,’ she said.  ‘But Charlie’s never been keen.’ 

‘Well…come with us,’ I said. 

A glint came into her eye.  ‘You know what?  I will,’ she said.  ‘I’ll bring Gabs.’  Gabriel.  My godson. Adorable, edible child.

So that is how we came to find ourselves getting off an airplane in Marrakech.  J

Okay, so it didn’t quite pan out the way we planned (more anon) but still…sensible, huh?  So, tell me, do you always  holiday en famille?  Do you compromise furiously? Or do you split up and do the things you all really want?  

The A-Z of Depressed Words

What can I say? The school holidays have begun and parents everywhere are faced with the challenge of keeping children amused for ridiculous amount of time. 

When did this keeping amused malarkey begin?  At the risk of sounding like the proverbial ancient fart, I used to amuse myself quite happily. Yes, yes, in perfectly innocent ways. 

‘Yeah, but you did weird things,’ said James. A long pause and then two words spat in accusation. ‘You painted.’

‘It’s true,’ I replied meekly. ‘I did. And I made things.’

‘Weird things,’ he repeated, firmly.

I frowned. Were dinosaurs made out of chicken bones weird?  And felt trolls? 

‘But I made money out of it all,’ I said defensively.  ‘Like I had an art gallery one summer and flogged my paintings; and then I did a haunted house and charged admission.’

‘Weird things.’

This sort of malarkey has never washed with James.  He’s never been a child who likes his own company. Some people just don’t.  When he was little I spent hours trying to instill in him a love of the arts – books weren’t just read, they were play-acted; rolls of lining paper were stretched out on the kitchen floor and we hurled paint around together; we made godamn musical instruments for pity’s sake. 

Some of it rubbed off.  He loves music (just doesn’t particularly want to play it himself). He reads furiously (but sticks to auto/biographies mainly).  But he refuses point-blank to do art or drama (too much of that around in real-life, he says).

So I guess there will be X-Box. There will be a lot of cricket and squash and a helluva lot of loping and sighing and eye-rolling. 

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘We could always go back to some of the old games.’

‘Like what?’ he said suspiciously. 

‘Umm…A-Z?’

This was a game we used to play on long car journeys (alongside one word/clause/sentence stories and car number plate dramas).  You know the score – you pick a theme (countries, cars, fruit, breeds of dog, authors etc) and go round in a circle taking the next letter of the alphabet. Jeez, it wears thin. 

‘Oh for **** sake,’ he said. ‘How depressing is that?’

And so, for your despond, I give you…

The A-Z of depressed words

A is for Apathy

B is for Boredom

C is for Crestfallen

D is for Despond

E is for Entropy

F is for Forlorn

G is for Gloom

H is for Hopeless

I is for Inconsequential

J is for Jaded

K is for Kiss (of Death) – interesting one – no really gloomy words start with K (C is pretty tough too) – the sound is just too explosive and cutting.

L is for Lost

M is for Morose

N is for Nylon (yes, I know but really…it is depressing, right?)

O is for Oppressed

P is for Pitiful

Q is for Querulous

R is for Redundant

S is for Sluggish

T is for Torpor

U is for Unremitting

V is for Void

W is for Why?

Y is for Yawning (as in chasm)

Z is for Zero

Can you add any better ones?  To accompany I offer you the wondrousness that is Edward Gorey. You haven’t come across him?  Oh, you lucky, lucky people. Go seek.