Organising a family holiday

By Catherine Evans

I can guarantee none of my family will read this. They show interest in my activities only when dinner fails to materialise. I’ve just organised a summer holiday, and what a mammoth task it was. Navigating flights, plus all the extras such as transfers, baggage allowances, insurance, accommodation, getting a second mortgage to pay for it all … I need the wretched holiday to get over the stress of arranging it.

Last year, my 19-year-old niece Kate got herself a job in a turtle sanctuary in Crete. My sister (her mother) and I left our husbands at home and took my daughter (then aged eleven) to visit her. Despite the age difference the two girls have always been thick as thieves. We rented a small two-room apartment five minutes’ walk from the beach. Yes, it was tiny, but it had a cosy living area, a cute little kitchen and it was surrounded by a lovely garden full of fruit trees and we even had our own minuscule kidney-shaped pool. It was a remarkably stress-free holiday. We were all happy to meander to the beach during the day, none of us were remotely interested in sight-seeing, we went to restaurants a

couple of times but did most of our cooking in the apartment and we spent our evenings zombifying ourselves in front of episodes of Never Have I Ever on Netflix. Happy as clams.

This year, we’re the same band of travellers, but our aged mother is joining. She moved in with us permanently last year after seven years of living alone, and we thought it would be nice to take her to Spain, so she can practice her Duolingo Spanish. (Truth be told, we may have seriously over-estimated her linguistic ability. The other day I asked her in my best Spanish if she’d like a cheese sandwich, and she didn’t have a clue what I was on about.)

Anyway. Picture this: you have two middle-aged sisters, two girls of twelve and twenty, and an eighty-year-old woman with limited mobility. Then, to my utter amazement, my husband suggested that he come along as well. I was flummoxed.

‘Of course, that would be lovely,’ I stuttered, ‘but …’

‘But what?’ he asked.

How could I put it politely? There’s a whole laundry list of reasons why he’d put a spanner in the works. In the first place, I’d need to find someone to look after the mutts. Second, we’d need a bigger car. We’ve hired a crummy little Fiat 500 and now we’d need a six-seater. Third, he’d throw the sleeping arrangements out. This time, our apartment has three rooms: one for me and my sister, one for the girls, and after eighty years on the planet, Aged Ma surely deserves a room all to herself. (As I’m so certain she won’t read this, I can also quietly reveal that she isn’t … how to put this politely … the most silent of sleepers.) Then there’s the restaurants. Being a serious foodie and a wine buff, he’ll want to try the best ones out, while we’re all happy to munch pizza or eat spag bol (yes, even in Spain) in front of some trash on the telly. He’ll want to go sightseeing, whereas we like to slob around until the last person emerges from their slumbers, then wander off to the beach.

Vive la différence, you may say, and you would be right: we can live with all these things. The bedroom situation isn’t really an issue, as the girls don’t mind dossing ona sofa or making little dog beds for themselves on the floor. We can put up with being frogmarched to restaurants to be force-fed delicious food we don’t have to cook for ourselves. As for the sightseeing … a little culture surely won’t kill us.

No. The biggest problem is the TV. We will suddenly have serious competition for it. No trash on Netflix for us. The telly will suddenly turn green, as when not scurrying off to castles and galleries, he’ll want to watch cricket and rugby all day and in the evenings, whatever we choose won’t have a high enough body count or sufficient car chases or special effects to satisfy him.‘What are the dates again?’ he asked. ‘Blast,’ he said after I’d repeated them. ‘I’ve got a couple of meetings that week that will be very tricky to rearrange.’ ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ I said, surreptitiously crossing my fingers.
I don’t feel too bad. I’ll take him back to Budapest when our daughter’s back in school. (There are some advantages to living with Aged Ma.) This way, everyone’s happy, including the mutts.