I am slouched, nay collapsed, in a near stupor on my sofa this evening. The television is a blur out of the corner of my eye and my husband forms an equally washed out figure slumped beside me. The reason for our exhaustion? We have just spent the last week on our family holiday.
Gone are the days when this might have meant we would be bronzed, relaxed and refreshed. Now breaks are more about endurance than R&R and we are always impressed if we make it through without actually suffering a nervous breakdown.
To be fair this year's summer break has to classed as our most successful so far, despite taking place in the initially unpromising location of northern England. For a start despite many bleak predictions it only rained once during the whole week and at the time we were all tucked up in bed, listening to the pounding raindrops on the velux windows as we snuggled under the comfort of a crisp white duvet.
Secondly the twins independence is coming on in leaps and bounds, which meant that we could snatch the odd moment to sit down and take a breath in between tending to their needs, something that was unthinkable this time last year. That said the children were careful to ensure that their slaves, oh sorry parents, shouldn't get too comfortable.
The moment either one of us looked like we might actually be enjoying a little time to ourselves a small voice would pipe up demanding juice, food, help with endlessly putting on and taking off shoes or the repair of the house train set that was unbelievably even more unreliable and prone to engineering problems than the real British railway network.
But the good thing about taking children on holiday is their huge capacity for enjoyment. While we may trudge, unimpressed, around yet another museum or castle, wondering quite how much more of this there is to go before we can return back to base and sink a lethally strong G&T or ten. The kids are wide eyed with awe no matter how unprepossessing said attraction may be. Throw in a dungeon or a display of weaponry and the boys are in heaven, revelling in imaginings of medieval torture or ancient warfare.
Though sometimes their blood lust does become a touch disturbing, like the time when my seven-year-old stood staring at some caged fowl and asked: "What do you think it would be like to kick a chicken?" with genuine interest. I simply crossed my fingers that this wasn't an early sign that I am breeding a psychopath and dragged him off to inspect a menacing threshing machine.
Though perhaps I should be worried as another highlight was a tour of Alnwick Castle's Poison Garden, where the boys were struck dumb by the guide's gruesomely detailed descriptions of plants that kill. They were still animatedly discussing one with sap that can inflict third degree burns days later. Sometimes I do long for daughters who I fondly imagine would be more diverted by pretty flowers than deadly nightshade.
The youngest though is still satisfied with the simpler pleasures in life as, urbanite that he is, he was most enthralled by all the fields of sheep we drove past on our way to visit the sights. Every flock we passed had him bouncing in his seat yelling "Hello sheeps", before launching into an uncannily accurate series of baas that kept him bleating till we inevitably passed another field of sheep.
All in all a good, if tiring, holiday was had by all. We were tempted by the idea of letting the boys have a TV in their room at home, because we got a lie in every morning as they ploughed through everything from Casablanca to Jumanji, with a lesson in modern history thrown in as they discovered what a video recorder is.
The twins found out how to climb out of their cots, with the tooth achingly sweet result that one morning I discovered them carefully unpacking the contents of Jonah's ever present toy bag in order to have a picnic in bed. Awww. Though the day they decided to attempt to change Zach themselves wasn't quite a pretty. From the mess they made with wipes alone I am just grateful they never actually managed to access the contents of the nappy itself.
As for us parents - assessing the number of empties there were in the recycling bin when we left, it was evident we had had a whale of a time once the kids were in bed.
The really good news though, is that the end of our holiday means there are only another two weeks left before school starts again and I can stop trailing around child friendly attractions and leave the task of keeping them entertained to the professionals again.
Showing posts with label family holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family holidays. Show all posts
Friday, 26 August 2011
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
The demise of the family holiday
The brittle crunch of sand peppering your picnic sandwiches, a flimsy windbreak flapping in a vain attempt to protect you from the biting salty breeze, the bone chilling icy water providing a welcome numbness to the sharp pebbles digging into your feet as you forlornly paddle at the rocky water's edge.
The slick embrace of a rain soaked tent as you struggle to subdue the canvas by hammering tent pegs into inexplicably rock hard earth, the misery of huddling under an umbrella as you watch the camp fire miserably spit and sizzle in a sudden downpour, the bickering and rows that fill the car on interminable, over-heated journeys punctuated by frequent, unwelcome in traffic jams and overcrowded service stations.
These are just a few of the memories conjured up by casting my mind back to the family holidays of my youth, so perhaps it is no surprise that today it is revealed that this annual trip is one luxury modern parents are willing to forgo.
When I was growing up my parents weren't that well off so a family holiday meant either being sent to Wales with my grandparents to stay with a maiden aunt or else a 1,000 mile car trip to stay with my vegetarian hippy aunt, her lute maker husband and their dysfunctional brood in their artisanal hovel in the South of France. Neither of which filled me with the excitement or anticipation a holiday probably should.
Of course it didn't help that my family really aren't very good at holidays. My mother always used to declare that we should all put ourselves in Holiday Mode as soon as the packing begun. This meant gritting your teeth and grinning through all manner of adversity from being fed inedible horse steaks in a Belgian motorway cafe, to staying in a French budget B&B where the only nighttime entertainment was the sound of my mum pounding to and from the communal loo at the end of the corridor as she threw up said horse steak.
Or there was the time when we drove back from Wales in my dad's old and unreliable van and got caught miles from home with nowhere to sleep other than on the musty chaise lounge that mouldered in the back of the lorry and was the reason for our chosen mode of transport, having been picked up somewhere along the route. That was a memorably sleepless night.
While the journeys, which were always peppered with disagreeable bickering from the front seats over whose fault it was that a wrong turning had been taken or a vital item had been left out of the packing, were particularly unpleasant, they paled in comparison to what awaited us on arrival.
In Wales my aunt's house should long have been condemned as unfit for human habitation, so filled was it with detritus and filth. The kitchen with sticky with grime, her bedroom tangy with urine and her nature vile with bad temper. Even worse, my sole companion, the television, only spoke Welsh. Even now the dulcet tones of that that tongue send me spinning back to the hours I spent sitting on her tacky carpet trying to decipher what on earth was going on at Welsh Play School.
Days were spent on freezing beaches, where my grandmother attempted to teach me to swim by ditching me into the icy water until my head went under and I was forced to scramble upwards or drown. Picnics were rendered inedible by copious amounts of sand being blown into every bite and the only other diversions were scenic drives in my grandfather's beaten up car, taken at his usual snails pace and while the air was rent with my grandmother's tuneless Welsh singing.
You might think that our sojourns to the sunny South of France offered more potential, but that would be without reckoning on the influence of my uncle and aunt, whose dilapidated flat we always stayed in. Said relations seemed to see our arrival as their cue to avail themselves of as much free labour as possible. So, while the parents got happily pissed on all that cheap wine, we children were pressed into endless hours of housework and babysitting for our brattish cousins, who in turned amused themselves by holding down and pissing on the neighbours' children.
I think the peeing salvo was part of a long running battle between auntie and the family upstairs who were devout Muslims and would regularly bleed lambs from their balcony sending the blood dripping past my vegetarian aunt's front window. I guess she had a point in losing patience with them, but I can't help but feel that my aunt and her family deserved everything they got.
On one visit she pressed every visiting guest to help her clear out her filthy home in preparation for a move and then promptly pushed off to go swimming leaving us to do the work, then there was the time when her idle, lute making husband, came in to get me out of bed to do the washing up while he and his wife finished up their wine.
Perhaps they saw the free labour as quid pro quo for free accommodation, but I would happily have forgone these breaks in exchange for being able to stay at home away from them, their children and their inedible food. Dinner chez auntie wasn't the sumptuous French cuisine you might imagine, instead we were treated to such delights as pasta drenched in ketchup or a knife full of jam which had recently played host to my cousin's finger. Nothing wrong with that you might think, but you don't know where that finger had been before it hit the jam pot.
So I can't say that the idea of the demise of family hols fills me with sadness. Of course I love spending two weeks with my four boys, but even then I usually feel as if I need a holiday to recover from it most years.
The slick embrace of a rain soaked tent as you struggle to subdue the canvas by hammering tent pegs into inexplicably rock hard earth, the misery of huddling under an umbrella as you watch the camp fire miserably spit and sizzle in a sudden downpour, the bickering and rows that fill the car on interminable, over-heated journeys punctuated by frequent, unwelcome in traffic jams and overcrowded service stations.
These are just a few of the memories conjured up by casting my mind back to the family holidays of my youth, so perhaps it is no surprise that today it is revealed that this annual trip is one luxury modern parents are willing to forgo.
When I was growing up my parents weren't that well off so a family holiday meant either being sent to Wales with my grandparents to stay with a maiden aunt or else a 1,000 mile car trip to stay with my vegetarian hippy aunt, her lute maker husband and their dysfunctional brood in their artisanal hovel in the South of France. Neither of which filled me with the excitement or anticipation a holiday probably should.
Of course it didn't help that my family really aren't very good at holidays. My mother always used to declare that we should all put ourselves in Holiday Mode as soon as the packing begun. This meant gritting your teeth and grinning through all manner of adversity from being fed inedible horse steaks in a Belgian motorway cafe, to staying in a French budget B&B where the only nighttime entertainment was the sound of my mum pounding to and from the communal loo at the end of the corridor as she threw up said horse steak.
Or there was the time when we drove back from Wales in my dad's old and unreliable van and got caught miles from home with nowhere to sleep other than on the musty chaise lounge that mouldered in the back of the lorry and was the reason for our chosen mode of transport, having been picked up somewhere along the route. That was a memorably sleepless night.
While the journeys, which were always peppered with disagreeable bickering from the front seats over whose fault it was that a wrong turning had been taken or a vital item had been left out of the packing, were particularly unpleasant, they paled in comparison to what awaited us on arrival.
In Wales my aunt's house should long have been condemned as unfit for human habitation, so filled was it with detritus and filth. The kitchen with sticky with grime, her bedroom tangy with urine and her nature vile with bad temper. Even worse, my sole companion, the television, only spoke Welsh. Even now the dulcet tones of that that tongue send me spinning back to the hours I spent sitting on her tacky carpet trying to decipher what on earth was going on at Welsh Play School.
Days were spent on freezing beaches, where my grandmother attempted to teach me to swim by ditching me into the icy water until my head went under and I was forced to scramble upwards or drown. Picnics were rendered inedible by copious amounts of sand being blown into every bite and the only other diversions were scenic drives in my grandfather's beaten up car, taken at his usual snails pace and while the air was rent with my grandmother's tuneless Welsh singing.
You might think that our sojourns to the sunny South of France offered more potential, but that would be without reckoning on the influence of my uncle and aunt, whose dilapidated flat we always stayed in. Said relations seemed to see our arrival as their cue to avail themselves of as much free labour as possible. So, while the parents got happily pissed on all that cheap wine, we children were pressed into endless hours of housework and babysitting for our brattish cousins, who in turned amused themselves by holding down and pissing on the neighbours' children.
I think the peeing salvo was part of a long running battle between auntie and the family upstairs who were devout Muslims and would regularly bleed lambs from their balcony sending the blood dripping past my vegetarian aunt's front window. I guess she had a point in losing patience with them, but I can't help but feel that my aunt and her family deserved everything they got.
On one visit she pressed every visiting guest to help her clear out her filthy home in preparation for a move and then promptly pushed off to go swimming leaving us to do the work, then there was the time when her idle, lute making husband, came in to get me out of bed to do the washing up while he and his wife finished up their wine.
Perhaps they saw the free labour as quid pro quo for free accommodation, but I would happily have forgone these breaks in exchange for being able to stay at home away from them, their children and their inedible food. Dinner chez auntie wasn't the sumptuous French cuisine you might imagine, instead we were treated to such delights as pasta drenched in ketchup or a knife full of jam which had recently played host to my cousin's finger. Nothing wrong with that you might think, but you don't know where that finger had been before it hit the jam pot.
So I can't say that the idea of the demise of family hols fills me with sadness. Of course I love spending two weeks with my four boys, but even then I usually feel as if I need a holiday to recover from it most years.
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