You Think You Need A Holiday?

I made a stark realisation the other day, whilst in the pub with a small group of people. They were discussing holidays. The usual, 'where we're going this year', 'where we've been' and 'where we want to go' conjecture. I was very quiet during this period. I have never left the country and therefore never had a passport, as one has never been needed. However, I thought about the last time I went on any form of a holiday. The answer is 2003.

This raises a lot of questions about the actual point of holidays, and that most people are idiots. Far too often I see and hear people proclaiming that they need a holiday. Fair enough. However, more often than not, the people who 'need' a holiday, are the people who went on holiday a few months beforehand. I know they went on holiday a few months beforehand because they never shut up about their holiday, and then posted endless pictures on Facebook of them drinking in a foreign pub, eating foreign food or sitting under a foreign sky next to a foreign sea on a foreign beach with foreign people frolicking about, wearing their foreign sun cream. Then, they return to the UK and show off their foreign sunburn and you can see the foreign tan-lines from wearing their foreign bikini.

These people who have a couple weeks of holiday a year, are the same people who are always buying shoes and clothes and phones and other treats for themselves, but every so often, complain they have no money. Just once, I wish I had the bravery to point out to them that perhaps they have no money to pay their rent or bills, or even afford to move out of their parents home, because they appear to treat their money the same way I treat my urine; when I have too much of it, I have to piss it away.

These people then spend their whole holiday on Facebook updating their statues to tell everyone that 'Hey, I'm on holiday. Look, I have a drink with a foreign umbrella in it. LOOK. AN UMBRELLA! LOL!'. Either they can't be very fascinating, or these people have very short attention spans. Either way, I don't see how you can be enjoying yourself if your fingers are tapping away on your phone constantly.

Anyway, why is having a holiday such a necessity? When did it become a commodity in the modern era? I don't know. All I know is that humans are just too gullible. Tell them that the only way they can relax is to go to a foreign country, and they'll follow your words like it's some ancient, religious scroll. Relaxing? That sounds stressful to me!

Firstly you have to actually pick a place to go. Do you go where there is snow? A beach? History? Culture? Climate wise, do you go to a cooler climate, a warmer climate, or one with a similar climate to the UK? I hate heat, so anywhere on the equator is out. However, I get painfully numb toes when it's frosty out, so should I really go to a cold climate? Assuming I actually pick a place to go, how do you get there? I don't like coaches for long trips, so that's a no. I love trains, so if it's in Europe, that's possible, but not if your crossing a vast amount of water. Never been in a plane or on a boat, so not sure what I would prefer. However, my ears pop on the underground, so how would I cope with being a couple miles up in the sky? Would be ears just explode off my head? Now, I can't swim, so why would I get on a boat? But, then again, I can't fly, so why would I get on a plane. If something went wrong, in both scenarios I die.

Now, what do you do when you actually get there? Go sightseeing? Take in the culture? Go skiing or windsurfing? Now, I can't even ride a bike, so chances I can't hold my balance to ski or surf. I don't do adrenaline. However, too many days walking around places, then I get bored. I don't like getting drunk, so the chances of me going on a wild bender down a street in Amsterdam are unlikely.

What do you eat when you're there? I'm picky enough with English food. I hate onions and mushrooms, and yet, whatever you want in the UK, you can bet there is one or the other in/on it. The only 'foreign' food I enjoy is Pasta, but it's not worth going to Italy just to eat something I can buy from Tesco and cook myself quite well. You have to try new, exciting foods. Well, what if it kills me? How would I ever know?

If I go to a foreign country, chances are they will all go about their lives jabbering some foreign language that I don't understand. I don't know the French for 'Poison'. What if I order that by accident; I'd be dead before I could get my phone out to translate the menu into English. The only thing I can say in a foreign language is in: French: 'Hi, my name is Stuart. The house.' It's not going to get me far.

Also, it's a foreign currency. I wouldn't have the slightest idea of whether I was getting a marvellous deal or being ripped off because I'm some naive foreign fool. Also, it's a hassle changing the money up. Some places give you more Euro's for your Pound's than others. What!? Just give me the money at the exchange rate, stop charging me for giving me my money, which I gave to you. Then how much money do you change? Okay, £10 is obviously not enough, but is £1,000 ridiculously too much? What's the mean between the two?

Overall, I have no idea what a holiday costs. I know I can get to France on the Eurostar for £30 something, and that for a return ticket to Australia, you're looking at potentially a £1000, but other than that, I'm stumped. Then where do you actually stay? Which star is sufficient? Now, I don't want to slum it and live in a one-star dump for a week, but perhaps going to a five-star hotel is living a bit above my means.

At what point in all this am I relaxing? Oh, when I go lay on the beach and read a book you say? Oh, while I'm smothering myself in a white cream every few minutes so that I don't spend the next week walking around stiffly because I've gone and got third degree burns all over my body? Or when I'm avoiding the water because I might either drown, get stung by some water-dwelling creating or eaten by a shark? Or all three could form the story of my death.

So, when people say they 'need' a holiday, they're either idiots or lying. They can want a holiday. They could even stretch to needing to relax, but a holiday really isn't essential to life. I am proof of that. If I have somehow managed to stumble my way through life for 10 years without a holiday, it's clearly not necessary to life. Plus, chances are, I'll saunter through another few years before I have a holiday of some shape or form.

When I was younger, holidays mostly included going to a camp site in Dover for either a week or two weeks in my Grandparent's tent, which I hasten to add I have many happy memories of. When I was one, I went on honeymoon with my parents to a villa in Cornwall owned by my Great-Uncle, to which I have no memory of at all. The last holiday I went on was a school trip in which we went to Somerset for 5 days, where I moaned about climbing a hill, threw up spaghetti hoops and cheese on my plate, and then re-ate, and had fun like any typical 11 year old did.

Since then, I have spent the past 10 years of my life stuck in the south-east of England. The furthest west I have been is Guildford and the furthest north I have been is North London. The closest to abroad is standing on the White Cliffs of Dover looking at France. That fact is a touch depressing. It proves I don't get out much. There are farmyard animals who have been to more countries than I and insects who have travelled further across England than I have. My car has totted up nearly 20,000 miles in past three years. And where have I gone? No where!

Therefore, assuming that holidays are a commodity, then if anyone needs a holiday, it's me. However, if I went on a holiday, I'd probably need another week to relax after. Obviously, that is assuming I haven't died getting there, being there or getting back...