My dad rails against ‘woke.’ He rails against a lot of things. As I left his flat this week he was telling me - even as I waved goodbye, and hurried off for my train - that they are now putting on POP MUSIC at The Proms and it’s ridiculous and people want to go on holiday ABROAD and why do they when we have everything we could ever want right here? (In Scotland).
I love Scotland but I have to say I absolutely love going away. We have always gone away even when we’d have been far better staying at home.
It’s the summer of 1997. Tony Blair is our new Prime Minister it’s all ‘Things can only get better.’ Our little east London house is filled with nappies - our twin babies are six months old - and I’m this bovine thing, stumbling around doing night feeds. And a thought hits me. We need a holiday.
Someone should have taken us aside and said, ‘Go somewhere hot with a kids’ club because all you want is to lie down.’ We don’t realise this. Naively, we think we want experiences, adventure. What we really want is to prove to ourselves that, although we are parents now, our lives haven’t changed one bit.
NO BORING RELAXING PACKAGE HOLIDAY WITH KIDS’ CLUBS FOR US!
‘Things can only get better!’ we tell ourselves as we drive from London to visit friends in Belgium, then onwards to stay with my sister-in-law in Germany, before finally arriving with our infant sons screaming in stereo in the backseat at an apartment in a converted grain mill in the Languedoc region of France.
The owner - a Londoner called Simon - is steaming drunk. He sloshes wine into our glasses from a five-litre plastic container and, for some reason, starts addressing me as 'Slapper'.
'More wine, Slapper?' 'Fancy something to eat, Slapper?'
We still believe things can only get better when it turns out that Simon’s 'charming courtyard restaurant' (as described in the brochure) doesn't exist. There’s just a chaotic kitchen filled with meandering cats and dogs and a chest freezer which emits a stench of decay and desolation every time it’s opened.
‘Rotting green beans, Slapper?’
Simon pulls out chicken portions, rips them apart with filthy hands and throws them onto the barbecue. We eat semi-raw poultry (burnt outside, bloody middle) and slope off, exhausted, to bed.
‘Night, Slapper!’
Still, things can only get better…
And they do - briefly - because the weather is lovely and at least there’s a pool! The pool which Simon tests with a little device - something to do with the water's chemical levels. We see him peer at its gauge, shout, ‘fucking hell’ and hurry away.
From other guests we learn that this had once been a thriving apartment complex until the authorities shut it down. Is this why we had to send our money to a mysterious Irish bank account?
Our babies sleep terribly in the dank apartment. Exhausted, Jimmy drives to the nearest town for nappies. He’s gone for hours. I am seething - how dare he leave me here and go off and have fun? Where IS he?
Simon tells me that Jimmy is on the phone (this is pre-mobiles). He has been in a car crash and is at the police station. He is unharmed, thankfully - but our car is written off.
‘Aw, Slapper. Does that mean you’ll have to stay here for LONGER?’
Shattered and depressed, we drive back to London in a replacement hire car. Our house is in sight when we clip a litter bin, scraping the passenger door and racking up an additional £350 charge.
As we stagger into our house, I replay Simon’s jovial cry as we’d left his place: 'See you next summer, Slapper!'
If you can bear to share, I’d love to hear your holiday horrors.
Love,
Fiona xx
PS Some news! If you happen to be in Glasgow this weekend - May 11-12 - then you might like to nip along to this! I love to sketch so I was delighted to be asked to take part. (That’s my Pakistani Street Food sketch).
And yesterday I realised didn’t have enough sketches for the exhibition so I had a cheeky afternoon off and went out and did some more. This was complicated!
Ever had that bathroom window feeling? (See below). I reckon we’ve all wanted to run away at some point - and the idea for my latest novel came from that.
If you ran away, where would you go? For Kate, it all starts with climbing through the bathroom window - and you can order a copy here!
‘Slapper’
I remember working with someone who always called this woman ‘Sis’. Just assumed they were siblings til one day he said it was ‘an in joke because she keeps getting cystitis’. Hm…
People are weird.
Looks a beautiful region of France.
Do holidays even exist when you take kids? 😂
Love your sketch!