Now summer is here, I'll be forced to spend time with my feral kids – and compete with other middle class parents
Relaxing holidays are the Greggs of holidays. Your child should be basket-weaving instead of fidget-spinning, playing with deprived schoolchildren instead of playing on the iPad. Taking your child on an all-inclusive sun, sea and sand holiday? It’s practically abuse, for God’s sake
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Next week The Husband and my two (feral) children are going on holiday. For the third year running, we are returning to our favourite place in northern Ibiza for two weeks of relaxation.
I shall spend my time sunbathing, reading bonkbusters and despairing at the sight of my bum from behind in the mirrored bathroom. The Husband will spend his time complaining about how much everything costs and the two (feral) children will spend their time trying to kill each other and eating chips.
If we’re feeling adventurous, we may venture out on a boat trip, where all our roles will merely be amplified – I will compare the size of my bum with those of the bobbing beauties sailing past in thong bikinis, The Husband’s fiscal complaints will extend to the effect of Brexit on kayak hire prices and the (feral) children will simply endeavour to drown each other.
At some point in the holiday we may go really wild and go out for dinner to a restaurant we haven’t been to before. If we do, we shall spend the next week backslapping ourselves for our adventurous spirits and the fact that we can so easily adapt to live like locals.
Yet even as I bake in the sun, pondering the exact year when a thong bikini stopped being an option for me, I know there will be a small niggle in the back of my mind that will stop me from truly enjoying our family holiday.
The niggle will not be my son’s endless scavenger hunt for rusty nails so he can fashion himself a “ blade”, nor my daughter’s demands to find a Starbucks that serves Unicorn Frappuccinos.
The niggle will not even be The Husband’s subtle but persistent appeals for Holiday Sex (is he mad? It's not his birthday and we’re months from Christmas.)
No – the niggle will be the deep feelings of inadequacy and shame, dammit, of being a bad parent, due to the current inescapable trend of middle class holiday one-upmanship.
Holiday one-upmanship: surely you’ve seen it – it’s everywhere. All over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (don’t pretend you’re on Snapchat – you’re too old.)
It’s those gently smug posts that gush: “Off trekking in the Costa Rican rainforest”, “ Day one of our tour of Naples, Rome and Athens. Five-year-old already prefers the Classics to Peppa Pig!”, “ Family fun in the Galapagos – learning Darwin’s theory of evolution with the kiddies before lunch!” Certain phrases coyly nail the message home, like “packed itinerary”, “breath-taking climbs” and, most galling of all, “yurt”.
You can ride in the Rockies, camp in Cambodia, or meditate in Mumbai – but you must NEVER EVER EVER use the shameful, neglectful, lazy, benefit–cheating R-word: relaxation. Holidays are not about relaxation. Relaxation is for the intellectually challenged, the markedly overweight, the soap-watchers, the leisurewear tribe.
Relaxing holidays are the Greggs of holidays. Your child should be basket-weaving instead of fidget-spinning, playing with deprived schoolchildren instead of playing on the iPad. Taking your child on an all-inclusive sun, sea and sand holiday? It’s practically abuse, for God’s sake.
You will ruin your child’s chances of exam success, obliterate the chance of him ever going to university, destroy his future, numb his mind, reduce his brain to mush – and all because you opted for the parasol-and-pina-colada cop-out alternative.
It is worth pointing out that this group of right-on holidaymakers can be further divided into three distinct camps.
The staycationers
When asked how they’re spending their summer, this group take delight in declaring that they’re holidaying in Wales, Norfolk, Cornwall, the Isle of Wight.
They talk expansively of the “farm experience”, refer to a mysterious activity they call “rock-pooling” and the undesirable-sounding “crabbing”. And yet how inadequate they make me feel in their Breton stripes and faint whiff of healthy sea air.
Their children will be the products of wholesome holidays – they will never get Type II diabetes, they will never do drugs or drink alcopops. They will become doctors or lawyers, they will marry well, they will produce further ruddy, glowing-cheeked progeny who will be born already freckled and smelling of Ambre Solaire.
The ones who “stay at their place abroad”
“Oh, we’re just going to our place in the South of France.” They always say it like that. Like of course we’d assume they have a bolthole in the Cap Ferrat. Doesn’t everyone?
This group trumps the last – because it’s almost as if they’re not even lowering themselves to actually “going on holiday” like the plebs. They’re simply moving location from one enormous pile to another more temperate one. And because they are – by definition – not “on holiday”, they can get away with lying about in the sun all day drinking Aperol spritzes. It’s just family leisure time that happens to be in a different country. Who can judge them?
The ones who “stay with friends”
Bastards. Not only are they getting a free holiday, but they also have glamorous, well-travelled friends who live in a different and enviable foreign location.
Like the previous group, normal rules do not apply. This is strictly someone else’s holiday, where you must bow down to your host’s choices, not your own. Therefore all-day drinking binges and lying comatose around the pool are beyond judgement. After all, you’re practically locals.
This summer, then, there will be no Homer or Ovid, no glacial lakes or Cornish cliffs, no llama-milking or wildebeest–tending on my family holiday.
I will not be expanding my children’s minds or shrinking the size of my bum. The Husband will not be celebrating the money he has saved by renting a caravan in Wales.
The children may be destined for a life of disappointment and failure, but this year in Ibiza I shall throw caution to the wind and book us not one but two new restaurants we haven’t tried before. I may even ask for the Spanish menu.
And next year? Book me into a yurt in Merthyr Tydfil.
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