What's a holiday?
- rosemary
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
"a time when someone does not go to work or school but is free to do what they want, such as travel or relax" Cambridge Dictionary
I am currently on a permanent holiday. In the sense that I no longer go to some kind of paid job. Of course, being a mother and a wife I also have - had in part - another job. And even if I wasn't any of those things I would have little jobs - washing up, cleaning, cooking and so on. The things that need to be done in order to live an orderly life. And I suppose, even if you have nothing you still have tasks to complete - find food, find somewhere to sleep ...
I also have not had a 'real' holiday for a few years now. I have had the odd night away, but nowhere longer than two nights for three or four years I think.
Do I need one? There are plenty of very good reasons to say no. I live in paradise. I have everything I could desire in the way of worldly goods, a happy family close by, loving husband ... When I retired - over twenty years ago now - I cannot really describe the relief I felt. A great weight of worrying about work and the people who worked for me, was gone. Just like that. I remember I took our dog for a walk and felt so free. And that feeling persists, although I substitute the anxiety about work with anxiety about the grandchildren's future with the planet in the shape that it currently is.
Nevertheless I hanker after a change of scene.
We have been watching Human - a television series on the spread of Homo Sapiens from Africa. Yes that journey took thousands of years, but nevertheless consider the obstacles - climate change which meant an environment virtually devoid of food in the shape of ice or desert, inpenetrable jungle - and the sea. The documentary had shots of a small group setting out on very flimsy looking rafts across a choppy sea, with no land in sight. Romanticised for TV of course, but nevertheless this must have happened. How could they do that? Why would you do that? Sometimes the movement to a new place was to search for a less hostile environment, but sometimes I suspect it must have just been an innate desire to explore.
So is it in our genes? Albeit in a much tinier way. Is it in everybody's genes? Some obviously stayed behind in Africa, some do not like to leave home. The outside world is too scary, or in a minor way, too difficult, too much of a bother.
"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell." said George Bernard Shaw. Which is also a bit extreme. I would not describe hankering for a change of scene or general restlessness as a definition of hell, but there's definitely a feeling of missing out on a special kind of feeling that a holiday has, that makes them feature so prominently in our memories. Ordinary, everyday life, is a blur in comparison, with only the odd remarkable, tragic, joyful experience standing out from the crowd. And yet in many ways holidays are ordinary everyday life, but lived elsewhere - and so - exotic - even if it's just your cousins' house in suburban Leeds in Yorkshire - where I remember the raspberries grown in the garden, the Yorkshire pudding which was more like a pancake, a chicken that we had to gut - eggs in a row at different stages of development, and the ice-cream man who came around once a week playing his tune.
It's the food I mostly remember from that holiday, because it was different from what we ate at home, and honestly, so many of my holiday memories are related to food. So a brief history of the holidays of my life and how they changed, and/or changed me.
Childhood
We had very little money and so not very many holidays. Most were staying with my grandmother in Portsmouth which is by the sea. It was a second home really, presided over by the fairy godmother - my grandmother - a benign and tolerant presence. And there was the sea, ferry trips to Gosport and the Isle of Wight, Nelson's Victory which we visited a few times, watching the old people bowling on the bowling green whilst my uncle raced his bike in the velodrome next door. And fish and chips around the corner, and shrimps by the pint. There were a few 'proper' holidays too - to Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, staying in guesthouses - a bit like Fawlty Towers, and one year in caravans which were a real adventure for us. Hours perusing rock pools. And more fish and chips.
Adolescence - The French experience - here I am with my hosts - the couple on the left, and the aunt and uncle of my French friend Simone - Monette as she was known. It's a picnic somewhere in a Paris park I think. I have talked often of those times, suffice to say that foodwise, and in many other ways too, it changed my life. It certainly made me a francophile, and indirectly sent me to the university to which I went.
Plus one brief trip with my parents and siblings, on one of my father's ships to Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg. Not terribly exciting food on the ship - unless it was Indian - as the cooks were all Goanese - although even then, looking back, it tended to be Anglo-Indian with sultanas. I didn't like the sultanas.
Before children and when they were very small - we camped, but the second toddlerhood killed that I think. So cooking with primitive equipment. In Yugoslavia - shown here - not much choice in food either. It was Tito's time and there was limited choice - we ate a lot of capsicum and tomatoes I seem to remember but there were potatoes too and as for meat, the butcher would have a carcass hanging in his shop and he just carved off the next bit he came to. And there we discovered Balkan sausages. In Australia it was barbecued stuff of course. Fun times with friends - and later, all of our small children, romantic times of early love. Yugoslavia was new and very different, as was Australia. Christmas in summer?
The working years - There were not many 'real' holidays in these years as most of them were attached to company junkets in exotic places with all expenses paid - as in Montreux - on the left, with a stopoff somewhere on the way back. I cannot now remember whether the first trip back to England with our very young children was just that or whether David was working then too. But for expats like us, a visit to the homeland and the family is another kind of holiday, although not without its problems and frustrations of fitting in enough time with all the people you want to see. Holidays, just for us? I can remember just two - both at Club Med who were so good at looking after your children whilst you relaxed. Food for all three types? Very posh for the company junkets, homely for the family/friends trips and somewhere in between at Club Med - although they were very sociable affairs, and they did have a touch of France about them. Holidaying with company colleagues, however lovely they are, and some of them are still our friends - is nevertheless a stressful affair as one has to be on one's best behaviour. Not relaxing.
Retirement - in many ways the really fun ones. A couple of holidays in Canada and New Zealand with old university friends which we made up as we went along as far as accommodation and food went - so much venison in New Zealand. A trip to visit our son, then residing in Vancouver, but mostly those years were 6 week affairs in France and/or Italy with different groups of friends from here, there and everywhere, in oustandingly beautiful houses in out of the way places. And so much glorious food - half of it in-house cooked by us, and half of it in wonderful local restaurants and bed and breakfasts as we travelled from one spot to another. Landscape, galleries, churches and cathedrals, strolls around towns, rambles in the countryside, chats around the table with our very best friends - and English family - and getting to know the locals because there was always somebody who spoke the language. A collage below:
As I said - we were doing pretty ordinary things - but with good friends, and in places we did not know, where even the supermarkets were an exciting adventure, and a group of men walking down a street is a photo opportunity.
This a photograph taken as we took off from NIce on our last trip back in 2017 - not the most beautiful stretch of coastline - there is so much concrete on the French Riviera - but nevertheless it's part of a holiday - the moment you leave, and it all fades into distant memories.
Since then we have had four holidays in Port Douglas - a beautiful spot. Paradise if ever there was one - as far as scenery goes anyway. And also somewhat exotic as the climate is quite different and hence the vegetation, not to mention the general scenery. Two were big family gatherings - wonderful - although, because it was family, there were moments. But the bad always fades and is overtaken by the good.
But nothing for three years, and they were very short. It all just seems too hard - and too far away. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe life is so good there is no need for a holiday.
Those genes that beckon us to faraway places, are difficult to deny however, and every now and then - as in the past few days for example, I hunger to be somewhere else with old friends.
"No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one." Elbert Hubbard
YEARS GONE BY
January 28
2024 - Tawook - it's just chicken
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Did consommé die?
2021 - Missing
2019 - Colour
2018 - Spirulina
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