Holidays then and now

As a child, going on holiday meant 3 things would happen.

1. My mother would stage an emotional meltdown and announce she wouldn’t be joining us. This usually happened after my dad, the suitcases and I had been sat in the car for ten minutes, leaving my mother to ‘do everything’. ‘Everything’ consisted of ‘trying for toilet’ and locking, unlocking and double locking the front door long enough for the whole street to clock the fact that we were going away and house would be empty.

2. My dad would crash the car. To be honest, this did not happen every time, but enough times that my dad actually drew out replacement number plates on cardboard to take on holiday. Two years running he crashed on our way to Norfolk and so keen was he to ensure our hat-trick that on the third year he crashed on the way there and the way back.

3. Someone would die. It was never anyone really close but plenty of relatives tried with enough abandon to render our entire trip just one long walk up and down the lane to the payphone for progress reports. At the last minute, having ruined our holiday with false alarms and panic, they’d pull through... and someone else would die. Usually, it was some old lady from the church, requiring my father to ‘phone c.100 relatives to offer support and sympathy. One year it didn’t happen. That was the year Princess Diana died. The robust health of our friends and family compelled God to sacrifice the People’s Princess – it’s a burden I’ve born ever since.

Early on in life, I vowed these habits would not accompany me into adult hood. Numbers one and two are easy. I spend 70% of each day ensuring that I do not become my mother and anyway, holidays don’t stress me out. On the occasions we drive to our destination both husband and I utilise a handy driving trick (which never occurred to my dad) of breaking before your bumper is touching the car in front, and it’s worked wonders for our holiday/accident ratio. No.3 is harder to control.

My father once curtailed a holiday before it had even begun with threats of death but, since he did actually die the week after, I forgave him. My mother, however, employs far more ingenuity. Faced last week with us on the way to Spain and no pressing health worries to report she did what every normal 77 year old does late on a Friday night and decided to shave her legs. The fact that she has shaved her legs c.3 times in the last 30 years appeared to be no barrier to her plans. Neither, unfortunately, was the fact that her lower legs are covered with surface veins just waiting to pop open and spill blood. You can see where this is going. She, apparently, could not. It was only after the first scrape had sent blood spurting across her dining room (She was shaving her legs in a bowl at the dining room table!) and onto the kitchen cupboards that she realised her mistake.

Luckily, she is no longer reliant on a pay phone down a lane and she managed to grab her mobile in time to summon my brother, who is in medical emergencies roughly like pig in s*** . Pressure was applied, paramedics were called and in the end no-one died... although if my mum gets her hands on the ambulance man who ‘threw away her razor, which was a good one as well that she had paid a lot of money for and could have given away to someone....’ who knows what might happen.