Holiday.... it could be so nice!

July 01, 2006

Warning: if you are my mother, you might like to look away now.

We've just come back from a week's holiday. We went to Cheshire on a canal boat with my parents and my brother. It's been planned since he was in Antarctica. I had been looking forward to it, albeit with a degree of trepidation.

It was a total nightmare. It was so bad that on several occasions I actually would have preferred to have been at work than on holiday. It was the worst holiday I have ever been on, by a considerable margin.

So, what could be so bad, you ask? Let me tell you in convenient bullet points:



I just cannot describe to you how utterly bleak it was. Standing at the back of the boat, driving in the pouring rain, freezing cold, with no clean suitable clothing left, knowing that I couldn't go on the internet or watch Wimbledon or chill out in front of Big Brother, having to endure my Dad and Isabel driving me slowly insane (in different ways), knowing that the next day would be more of the same, thinking about how I was wasting one fifth of my annual leave and how lovely it would be to be in my nice warm office, quietly typing invoices and listening to the tennis on the radio.

When the going gets tough, the tough start smoking, and I was glad I smoked this holiday. It was one of the few pleasures I had left. I know I'll have to give up again at some point, but my god I was grateful for it in my darkest hour. I was also glad of "Work it Fatty", the playlist I have on my iPod Shuffle, which got me through some hard times. We stopped for a night in Chester and I bought a gorgeous Coast top to cheer me up, which was nice. But other than that, there was not a lot of good times.

I'm writing this so that next time somebody suggests going on a canal holiday, I can look back and think, "No fucking way, never again, you're having a Turkish bath". I'm prone to having a somewhat selective memory and I needed to write this down so that I didn't accidentally forget just how horrendous it really was.

I know this must sound really ungrateful, especially as my parents paid for us to go on this holiday, and that's why I didn't want my Mum to read this. Hi Mum! Knew you wouldn't be able to resist! It's not that I'm ungrateful, it was my own fault. I should've realised that my hayfever is always awful in June, and that Izzy is never at her best cooped up, and that my Dad can't help being a project manager. I should have seen it coming. It's not my parents fault that we didn't enjoy ourselves. I really did try to pull it out but there were just too many extenuating circumstances.

We came home last night. We got in, got a takeaway, opened a bottle of champagne. Matt played on the internet, I watched the Big Brother eviction. This morning we all slept in, then I went to the gym. This afternoon I lazed in the sunshine, went to the local school fete and watched the entirety of the Andy Murray match which was totally awesome. We had a glass of Pimms in the garden after Isabel had gone to bed. It was so relaxing, it was ALMOST LIKE BEING ON HOLIDAY.

That lesson has so totally been learned.

Comments:
Oh... you poor, poor thing. I felt so sorry for you after reading that. And totally sharing your hayfever pain. Looking on the bright side, you will always look back on this anbd think 'however bad this event/party/holiday/work do is, it wont be as bad as that time we were stuck on the canal while the rest of the country was in scorching heat.'
I've had 2 notably bad holidays - one in Newquay with Steve which I hated, and one elsewhere which I cant write about here but if you want I'll tell you - where I actually felt like kisssing the tarmac when I got off the plane, like the pope does. But both of them combined sound only marginally less bad than this one. PS. thanks to MG for his hilarious comment on my blog x
 
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