Boy, do I need a holiday

We are lazy about organising holidays. Life is so nice at home, for a start. The garden starts to come into its own around now, the weather’s kind and the children are being helpful - partly because they are wonderful but mostly because they have made that link between good behaviour and holiday treats.

            So, where to go? What to do? There are a few destinations on our wish-list which coincide, but mostly our discussions about where to grace with our presence for two weeks end up in sullen stalemate. We usually holiday in the UK and very nice it is too, but that doesn’t stop the annual tizzy about whether to go abroad or not.

            Me? Iceland or New York, thanks. The children? Egypt, to see the Pyramids. Or back to Menorca. My husband? Something hearty involving Pyrenees and bikes. There is so little common ground that we are always destined to be going down the compromise route that doesn’t suit any one of us 100%, but we never admit that until woefully late in the game.

            So off I hop onto the internet, and begin the first of a long series of doomed evenings trying to out-smart the holiday industry. I shudder to think how many times I have been round the world, online.

            There are so many complications to factor in. Whether to sell your soul to Tesco and use Clubcard vouchers to go somewhere that wasn’t on your wish-list? And if you do that, do you still get 10% off if you book online? But, hang on, that deal doesn’t include car hire - here’s another company that does! How can I get 10% off there?

It’s easy to lose focus and discover it’s after midnight and you’re cross-eyed, investigating the pool depth in a villa that’s too small in a country you’ve never heard of that ends in ‘ania’, but because you get a mighty 15% discount maybe you can convince yourself that it would be just great for a family trip? Even though you have to fly from Bristol via Munich?

With the exception of the legendary time when we thought it would be a good idea to drive from Conon Bridge to Austria with three children under six, we have only ever managed one family holiday abroad. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, back when Dingwall had a travel agent.

With time on my hands before a hair appointment at Sandra’s I wandered in, briefed the travel agent on my mission (family of five, short flight, hire car, pool with a properly shallow shallow end, secluded, near a beach, stupidly low price) and left to get my hair done. When I returned, coiffed, with that ‘is she or isn’t she?’ glow, the agent broke the news that given the short notice, there was very little left.

I was baffled. Six weeks, on my planet, is not short notice. Six weeks is ages! 

            ‘I’m not sure what you’ll think of this one, it’s all I’ve got,’ she apologised, turning the Thomsons brochure round so I could have a look at The Villa Nobody Else in the British Isles and Possibly Europe wanted.

            It was love at first sight. Half-hidden by flowering creepers, at first you’d think the person who took the photo of the old farmhouse must have been overdoing the sangria at lunch but then, checking the roof-line, I saw that the whitewashed stone building with its terracotta roof tiles really was sloping oddly to the right. Green paint was peeling off the rickety window frames. The only things missing were an old crone whittling clothes pegs, and a donkey.

            “Perfect,” I declared. “Menorca it is.” And - this is the best bit - I just wrote out a single cheque, and it was all done. Flights, car hire, taxes, shrink-wrapped food on the aeroplane, the lot. It didn’t cross my mind to ask for a 10% discount; the whole job was completed in minutes. And the holiday was brilliant.

            In the three years since, we haven’t been remotely organised enough to repeat the experience. Though if I counted up the number of hours I’ve spent trawling the web for new deals, it would easily be the equivalent of another fortnight in the sun.