The Slob's Holiday

My husband and I went to Reno for our holiday last year. The children were alarmed. ‘Isn't that where people go to get a quickie divorce?’ asked my second son.

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to look enigmatic and interesting. ‘You're not getting divorced, are you?’ he asked bluntly. ‘No,’ I said, ‘we're going to an outdoor pursuits trade fair.’ The children slouched away, muttering things like ‘boring’.

I have brought my children up to be polite, but I fear that they are most impolite – under their breath. I call them children, but they are all grown-up. My eldest son has started to develop fine lines around his eyes – fledgling crow's-feet. A terrible sight for any parent to see.

There isn't a word for grown-up children, though I must admit ‘groanies’ comes instantly to mind. Are there parents out there who think that once their children reach the age of eighteen they are off your hands? Excuse me while I laugh, a cynical, dry, mirthless kind of laugh. I, too, thought as you did. Eighteen was the magical number in my mind as I endeavoured to pack my groceries at Sainsbury's, while one or more of my children had a spectacular tantrum under the trolley.

Anyway, this piece isn't about the damned groanies, it's about holidays. The first thing to be said about holidays is that anybody who can afford one should be grateful. The second thing is that planning holidays can be hard work. In my household it starts with somebody muttering: ‘I suppose we ought to think about a holiday.’ This remark is usually made in July and is received glumly, as if the person making it has said: ‘I suppose we ought to think about the Bolivian balance of payments problem.’

Nothing much happens for a week and then the potential holiday-makers are rounded up and made to consult their diaries. Hospital appointments are taken into consideration, as are important things to do with work. But other highlights on the domestic calendar, such as the cat's birthday, are swept aside and eventually two weeks are found. The next decision is the most painful: where?

We travel abroad to work quite a lot but we return tired and weary, so the holiday we are planning is a slob's holiday: collapse on a sunbed, read a book until the sun goes down, stagger back to hotel room, shower, change into glad rags, eat well, drink well, wave goodbye to teenagers, have last drink on hotel terrace, go to bed then lie awake and wait for hotel waiters to bring teenagers home from disco.

I never want to be guided around another monument, as long as I live. I do not want to be told how many bricks it took to build the damned thing. I have a short attention span for such details.

I also want to live dangerously and get brown. I want to see my doughy English skin change from white sliced to wheat germ. I like the simple pleasure of removing my watch strap and gazing at the patch of virgin skin beneath.

I do not want to attend a ‘folk evening' ever, ever again. The kind where men with their trousers tucked into their socks wave handkerchiefs in the direction of women wearing puff-sleeved blouses, long skirts and headscarves.

I don't want to make new friends on holiday; I can't manage the ones I have at home. I do not want to mix with the locals and I have no wish to go into their homes. I do not welcome tourists who come to Leicester into my home. Why should the poor locals in Holidayland be expected to? Isn't it bad enough that we monopolize their beaches, clog their pavements and spend an hour in a shop choosing a sunhat that costs the equivalent of 75 pence?

So, the slob's holiday has several essential requirements: a hotel on a sandy beach, a balcony, good food, a warm sea, nightlife for the teenagers, a big crowd to get lost in, and an absence of mosquitoes. It's so tiring applying that repellent. I would also prefer it to be in a Muslim country where all the beautiful women are clad from head to toe in black. On this point my husband and I disagree.

As I write, we are still at the planning stage. We have looked through all the holiday brochures, but they are full of references to ‘hospitable locals’, ‘folk nights’, ‘deserted beaches' and ‘interesting historical sights’.

Not our cup of tea, or glass of sangria, at all. We slobs of the world must unite (if we can find the energy). We have nothing to lose, except our torpor.