6 years later and T minus months

No-one deserves a long glamorous holiday (and let’s get this out of the way – a heavily CO2 emitting holiday) but there is something about turning 50 and working your bollocks off which makes you want one.

It’s about time, and about time.

It’s about carving out more than a week to let the email sweat out of your system, to put down the phone and to remind yourself why you love your family. Or at least, to remember how to not kill each other over 2.5 weeks in close captivity, I mean proximity.

It’s about time away, as a family. It’s about noticing that you’ve hit the half century and your mortality is screaming louder than Kier Starmer’s ethics adviser receiving his new suits at the door. It’s about working hard all year with a large, expensive, indulgent, carrot at the end.

It’s about the involuntary reminder of how time has passed us – the girls were 7 and 10 on our last trip – they’re now 14 and 16. Cesca has doubled in age. That’s what happens. She did it without thinking.

When I last posted here, Theresa May was the Prime Minister, I had never heard of Wuhan or covid and Nigel Farage was bloated in post-election victory. So some things don’t change.

Of course, it wasn’t meant to be this.

Last winter I spent weeks planning a trek in Nepal instead, over the October half-term. I mapped out every day with the precision of someone who desperately needs to loosen up. The transfers, the trek, the sneaky side trip to Varanasi, the genius flight from Varanasi to Kathmandu, the time acclimatising, the trekking guide, the rest days. All done and dusted with the deposit email staring at me. Don’t worry about if the family wants to go trekking, this was my 50^th, right?

Then I got ill in Morocco, ended up spending two days in hospital in the UK upon returning home, and decided we needed to go somewhere easier and safer instead. The Nepalese travel agent was very gracious about the time wasted – I feel guilty writing about it.

We go back to the drawing board. Somewhere new – we’ve never been to Asia as a family. With good weather. That’s exciting. And with relatively low chance of ending up in hospital.

Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam it is. Pathways flattened by decades of backpackers; accommodation beaten into shape by cohorts of discerning French silver surfers inspecting their lost colonial assets – the golden decade** indeed. They deserve it more.

With months until Christmas we hurtle on, with this wonderful south east Asian trip nudging into view every so often. As testicles become frozen twice daily on Reading’s train platforms, visions of winter sun keep the rest of the body lukewarm.  

‘So where are we going and why are we even going at all? I mean why are we missing Christmas. I don’t want to miss Christmas. Do I have to come?’ one daughter asks.

Good points.

‘Because I deserve a decent holiday,’

‘You hypocrite, you say nobody deserves this’

They’re right and fortunately so am I.

** The golden decade is a concept in France of how you spend your 60’s – you retire at 62 then travel the world or chill at home, enjoying your empty nest while you still have your health and hopefully some wealth. You can’t argue with the concept, well unless you’re President Macron with a tres enorme budget deficit to balance. His wife’s obviously had her golden decade.