Holidays have certainly changed, but for the better

Speaking of this whole holiday business. I say ‘this business’ with a bit of detachment, because let’s be clear that it doesn’t really concern me; I say it as if I were annoyed by the fact that, for at least a month now, every conversation has started with: ‘So, where are you going on holiday?’ and ‘When are you going on holiday?’ In fact, I am irritated – do we not have anything more substantial to discuss, the two of us? But immediately afterwards, as I hear my voice repeatedly replying with the same words and politely asking the same question, I realise that I am actually relieved: we really do not have anything more substantial to discuss, the two of us.

Anyway, this whole holiday business has definitely changed. I’d say it’s changed for good. And as far as I’m concerned, I wish to clarify that it’s quite normal for it to have changed for good. In fact, I can even see the silver lining in this change: what is it? Ah yes, here it is: the financial side of things. This year, neither of the two children I gave birth to and raised with love – for whom I stayed up at night, administered paracetamol suppositories and removed lice from their heads – will be coming on holiday with me. It’s a considerable financial saving: two plane tickets cost half as much as four. Two ferries, four ferries, and so on. I have always been brilliant at maths, but I think you can work it out too. Not to mention the dog, and the emotional relief of not having to deal with the long faces of those who, absurdly, don’t think Greece is the most beautiful place in the world and don’t think that the public beach – which is a real struggle to reach, but with peacocks and tamarisk trees – is the sort of place you’d want to spend the whole day at, at least until sunset. And then I’m well aware that parents’ and children’s summers must inevitably part ways, only to perhaps meet up again at some point in front of a suitcase full of laundry, or in a pizzeria, or even at Cinecittà, to pick up the dog who’s become obese in the meantime.

So what I mean is that, as far as this business of holidays being shattered into a thousand tiny pieces by the passing of time is concerned, I’m fine. I’m very positive. I needed my freedom too, after all those summers spent looking for surprises in crisps, and after that time when my son refused to walk uphill any further to see the Parthenon, so I hoisted him onto my shoulders and thought: I’m going to die now; luckily I’ve got a lovely dress suitable for death right here beneath the Parthenon, and I’m quite tanned. But I didn’t die, and whilst I was drinking ten litres of water, I thought that this wouldn’t be the only time we’d look at the Temple of Athena together: there’ll be better times, I told myself, there’ll be thrilling moments when he’ll be the one saying, ‘Come on, Mum, how long are you going to take?’ We’ll take some lovely photos.

Instead, I would say – calmly and positively, and fully aware of the financial savings – that that was almost certainly the only time: the time I was nearly suffocating under the soft weight of my son and under the August sun in Greece. The time I do not even have a single photo, because a wave swept my phone away. But it doesn’t matter, because this whole holiday thing has changed and now I have loads more time to take photos, to keep an eye on my phone and to reclaim my freedom. I can really hear it – the sound of freedom. A sound of clinking glasses, of cicadas, of adults’ voices, of straw hats: a white noise, utterly tedious.