I’m not anti-vacation as such. Last year, for instance, my boyfriend and I spent an idyllic 10 days in Marrakesh. We ate, swam and read and it was bliss. We came home totally revitalised. This was because we left the children at home. It has taken a while, but I have finally realised that holidays with sprogs simply aren’t holidays in the accepted sense. They are neither restful nor relaxing. You come home knackered. What’s the point? I started getting stressed out about this holiday about three weeks ago. We were returning to London from Warwickshire. We’d been gone 10 days. Looking at the car, you would think we had been travelling round the world for months.
The grumpy children had to sit cross-legged because we needed the floor space beneath their feet for luggage. The grumpy dog was concertinaed into a tiny corner of the boot. The grumpy baby was wedged in on all sides, with barely enough room to swing a rattle. The grumpy nanny (who does the driving) is scared of motorways.
I got cramps in my legs because there was a steam steriliser and a nappy bag crammed under them, and a huge bin-liner of stuff we didn’t want to leave behind in the fridge, dripping on my lap.
I was grumpy too. Everywhere you turned, there was stuff — pram, suitcase, kite, books, travel cot, wellies. It was unbelievable. This despite the fact that we travel light: it’s not like we feel the need for Louis Vuitton luggage. And the car is a seven-seater.
It was at this point that I decided I would rather stick pins in my eyes than repeat the performance three weeks later. Life is too short.
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At first I thought maybe the problem was car related, and considered flying. But the idea of a heavily sedated claustrophobe (I hate planes, and can only get on them if I am drugged) in charge of three children and a hysterical dog, negotiating the swarming, bad-tempered crowds at the airport (not to mention the inevitable delays . . .) was more than I could bear.
The truth is that holidays en famille are exhausting. I’m not saying one shouldn’t go on vacation. Obviously, it would be terrible to deny your children trips away. All I’m saying is, we shouldn’t call these trips holidays. They’re a week or two away with the children. They are fun, but they’re not relaxing. They’re a nice thing you do with your kids, but not something you come back from with renewed energy.
I’ve had the suspicion that family holidays weren’t all they were cracked up to be for a while now. We usually go the villa route, and while it is undeniably lovely to be holed up somewhere scenic with a swimming pool, there are also distinct disadvantages (airport/plane hell aside).
I don’t find these kinds of holidays remotely relaxing. They’re like being at home, except it’s hotter and you haven’t got all your things around you. I may be in Tuscany or the south of France, but I’ve still got three children who need entertaining.
The cooking still needs to be done, as does the laundry and shopping — except that, thanks to forking out thousands of pounds, I get to do all of the above in sweltering heat with, usually, inadequate kitchen equipment.
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Added bonus: I can worry about the children drowning in the pool while I make lunch (using local olive oil, yippee), or about them being stung by wasps (in the daytime) and giant mozzies (at night). And then we always ask people to come and stay.
At that point I find myself thinking that, nice as it is to see them, it is curious that, despite harbouring no ambitions in that direction, the endless round of cook-clean-launder means I spend much of my life feeling exactly like I run a B&B. And then there’s other people’s children. Hmm.
So what about the extended family vacation? You know, where you go on your hols with relatives and their children — and realise that said offspring are that lovely combination of whiney and hyper. Or that your brother’s idea of parenting is no bedtime and fizzy drinks on demand — or that his children are creepily mollycoddled.
Either way you end up in competitive parent syndrome, where you realise that there is a contest going on. This is even worse if your holiday companions are not relatives but friends, because there’s nothing like a joint holiday to sour a friendship.
So really, why bother? Tans are nice, I suppose, but you can go brown any time you like with the fake stuff, which has the distinct advantage of not giving you cancer. And, er, that’s it. The rest is a total waste of a huge amount of money.
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It’s a myth to imagine that young children love holidays. Young children love swimming, and you can do that anywhere. They often find the non-swimming part of holidays unsettling and only stop feeling unsettled the day you’re going home. My children told me that they were loving this summer the other day, and they haven’t been anywhere other than the countryside and the local lido.
It helps that London in August is quiet, peaceful and slower-paced, with the space to do all the stuff you don’t normally do. I’m going to show them Venice in the October half-term, as compensation for their lack of France/Italy this summer — but really this is only because I want to, not because they’re agitating for abroad.
The truth of the matter is that holidays with sprogs only work if you have a nanny or if you’re going somewhere where there will be help with childcare (though I don’t know how much fun it is to be shoved into a kids’ club for the day. I can’t say I’d like it).
It is, of course, possible to have a nice time without the extra help, but that nice time does not include relaxation.
It’s hard to prettily sip a bellini at dusk, admiring the view, if you’ve got two children astride you and a third clinging to your leg wailing about chocolate. And there is no chocolate because the charming villa is in the middle of nowhere and you have to drive for an hour to get to the supermarket.
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My new brainwave is that the obvious solution while children are small is to spend the money one would normally spend on a trip abroad on having a fantastic time at home. In the Christmas holidays, instead of going abroad I am going to hire a daily masseur, a cook and a daily cleaner — and maybe a person who can do me a St Tropez tan.
I’ll be in such a good mood that I’ll be extra nice to the children, who will be out gambolling with their personal footie coach or music and movement specialist.
We will eat delicious food and not have to cook it or clear it up. I’ll get to drop my clothes on the floor and have somebody else pick them up before running me a bath. And I won’t have to go anywhere near an airport. Now that’s what I call a holiday.