It’s that time again… Husband is giving me that wide berth normally reserved for danger-fraught circumstances like deadlines, contagious illness and PMT. I cracked two toes on the empty suitcase that’s been lying in the hall for days waiting to be put in to service. The passports that have been in plain sight for months have now gone missing – especially worrying as it coincides with the disappearance of a black marker pen and the arrival of a suspiciously guilty look on my four-year-old’s face. And I’m wondering if there’s a safe, non-surgical way to lose four stone by the weekend.
I’d give a heartfelt, howling rendition of ‘Summertime Blues’, but this time of the year is up there with Christmas on the ‘Great Excuse For Martyrdom’ scale, so I’ve taken to stomping around, while sighing pointedly and playing keepy-uppy with my petted lip instead.
‘Chill out,’ says husband. From a safe distance and with the added protection of a riot shield and safety goggles. Chill out? Chill out?
I’m a martyr on a schedule; I haven’t got bloody time to chill out.
And I’m not the only one who’s suffering from pre-holiday stress. Whenever I enter the room, the kids now adopt a look of panicked terror and check out the emergency exits.
But then, they know if they want to get as far as sun, sea and laughing at their mother trying to successfully mount a lilo, then they have to get past the most tortuous event of their year: the holiday haircut.
Why do small boys hate anyone touching their hair? Why can they not sit at peace for more than ten minutes? Why do I think that a Saturday job in a hairdressing salon when I was fourteen has somehow given me the kind of skills you’d expect from Vidal Sassoon?
And why did I only ever learn one haircut? Since I’ve appointed myself responsible for the crowning glories of our whole family, we all march into the airport looking like fully paid-up members of the Tufty Club.
At least everything that will happen between now and the check-in desk is comfortingly predictable.
We leave approximately forty-eight hours from now, so that gives loads of time to pack up our capsule wardrobe, then re-pack it when we discover that the collective weight of our cases is roughly the same as a 747.
Then we’ll find the documentation for our annual travel insurance policy – that expires an hour before we leave.
We’ll discover that we’ve forgotten to collect our foreign currency five minutes after the Post Office has shut.
We’ll remember to book the taxi – and discover that we won’t all fit in one cab.
We’ll make a point of putting the camera in a safe, secure section of the luggage. Fourteen photo-free days later, we’ll come home to mysteriously find it in its usual place in the kitchen cupboard.
We’ll pack the entire stock of the Early Learning Centre, Toys R Us and the Argos catalogue for the children’s amusement on the plane. They’ll be saying they’re bored before the wheels leave the runway.
We’ll find last year’s suntan lotion… has leaked all over our newly packed clothing.
We’ll cancel the papers, ask a neighbour to put out the bins, clear the fridge of perishables, beg a nice friend to cut the grass, stop the mail, pay all outstanding bills, clean the house, stock up the first aid kit and change the beds.
Sorry, just realised that through the whole of that last bit I was using the term ‘we’. I do, of course, mean ‘little old martyr me’.
Husband will show up half an hour before we leave with four pairs of kecks, a pair of flip-flops, a book and his swimmies. And somehow he’ll still have something to wear every night of the two-week break. Woe.
Thankfully, preparing for a holiday is like childbirth – the minute it ends and you reap the rewards, ecstasy kicks in and you forget the pain…
At least until next year’s countdown to Tufty Tours.