Holidays are rum games aren’t they? Today we returned from
our holiday in Suffolk, a most enjoyable week spent in a fairly isolated self-catering place on the edge
of marshes not too far from Southwold.
All very pleasant but now we are back home, the routines of
daily life have established themselves and Suffolk has already begun to fade
from our memories. Yet we were still there early this morning. If our quick-fade holiday experience is common then why do we go on holiday at all? We are no longer escaping from a life down the pit or from the dark satanic mills.
Yet it still seems obvious enough why we go on holiday even though in our
case we are retired and life is one long holiday. We escape from familiar
routines explore new places and so on. Holidays are definitely pleasant interludes but -
hang on there is somebody at the door...
...Only a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Haven’t seen them for
a while – told them we are still unpacking which is fairly true. Where were we?
I know - holidays. What do we escape from when we go on
holiday? Obvious enough when we are working I imagine – we are still escaping from
work even if we no longer fill our days with toil and drudgery. What else? I’m not sure. It feels like one of those highly familiar
social experiences with its highly familiar language which doesn’t quite apply
to the modern world.
Escaping from the daily grind of work – that’s still easy enough
to understand but why do we carry on doing it when we retire? Perhaps holidays
give us a sense of freedom - a freedom we cannot really attain but must believe in.
Discarded responsibilities which we cannot really discard but for a week or so
we can pretend.
I wonder if Jehovah’s Witnesses go on holiday?
2 comments:
The last time Mrs O'Blene and I went on holday was in 2007. We 'borrowed' a cottage near Barnard Castle from a good friend, and I eventually bought him three pints of Sheps 'Old Capitalist - 7.9%abv - as payment. JRT had a field day, rummaging in the gorse of Cow Green and High Force. We sank several pints each lunchtime and walked for miles each morning.
Whenever we discuss holidays, we go through the motions of considering the opportunities of France, but as our passports expired years ago, that's a dead duck; then the West Country, but Mrs O'Blene's back isn't that good for long journeys nowadays, then East Anglia, which still shimmers, as Bury St Edmunds is a lovely city.
But in the end, we just wait a few seconds, staring out of the window. The madness passes and we just agree to stay here, in the village we love, and plan to buy a few bottles of wine and consider a ready-meal from Waitrose, or a trip to the pub!
Sad? Not really...
Scrobs - if you love where you live I imagine holidays don't seem all that appealing. We live in a small ex-mining town which is handy and friendly but that's about it. Even so we can be driving through Derbyshire countryside in five minutes and we often remark on that when we come back from a holiday.
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