Alexa, play “We’re All Going on Our Summer Holidays” by Cliff Richard

You awaken at 3am, you feel a little bit nauseous and your eyes are both heavy and alert at the same time. You get dressed with the clothes you carefully laid out the night before, because you knew that your very tired and confused mind could not be trusted to properly assemble an outfit at such a tender hour. You switch off all the plugs and shut all the windows, and you check your bag for your passport, money, keys, and sunglasses. You check again, and again. It somehow feels possible that one of these important items could have slipped through the many layers of fabric of your bag and fallen silently into a hidden crack in the floor without your noticing. Your family gather together by the front door and make sure everyone has what they need. You’re all whispering, but it isn’t all that clear why; perhaps it is just too early for conversation at a regular volume. You step outdoors, it is cold and fresh, and the sky is just beginning to brighten. That pink daybreak light, the cold leather of the car seat against your skin, the feeling of hunger mixed with an exhausted nausea that is telling you it is definitely too early to eat. That is how all good holidays begin. 

When the pandemic hit, our summer holidays were right in Corona's line of fire. There would be no early morning car rides to the airport this year, and it didn’t take long for the “RIP summer 2020” memes to hit the internet. Photos of people wearing hazmat suits by the swimming pool or pretending to take pictures of themselves looking out an airplane window made of a toilet seat were all over my feed. It was quite funny, in a sort of desperate, longing way where the laughter is followed by a deep and mournful sigh. We tried to laugh it off, but our feelings were really just a sad mix of devastation, confusion, and rage. Corona robbed us of our precious summer holidays; she had gone too far. 

Holidays are somewhat of an obsession for the British public. We have all been in an office chatting to a colleague, or in the library late at night with a friend, or in a coffee shop listening to the chatter of the people around us, and at some point or another the words “I need a holiday” have been said. People say this all the time, actually. We all have a friend or a family member who every year without fail books their summer holiday at least 10-12 months in advance. We all see other people’s holiday pictures posted all over the internet, people pining after those golden sun-kissed times with captions saying “take me back!!” I’d go as far as to say that it is part of our culture to spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about being on holiday. 

The winters in Britain are long, dark, wet and cold. That little week away in Spain, the long-awaited family trip to Florida, the once-in-a-lifetime dream holiday to Australia; these are the things we need to keep us going through the cycle of stress, hard work, rain, and lack of sunlight that we churn through during the rest of the year. Holidays are the hope we cling to. They are the small period in a long year where we will be carefree, our best selves. At least, that is the myth we keep telling ourselves. 

I’m starting to wonder what this is all about. 

Last summer whilst on an amazing trip in Vietnam, my boyfriend and I met a Dutch couple who were a little older than us and had just started very impressive, intense careers. I remember one of them saying something about how she didn’t want this one holiday to be the highlight of her year. This is something I have turned over in my head ever since.  

It’s not that she didn’t want to enjoy her holiday. There’s nothing wrong with planning a holiday, looking forward to it, and reminiscing over it once you return. It’s that she didn’t want it to be the only good thing in her year. She didn’t want it to be the thing that got her through, the hope she clung to. A random stranger said one sentence and it suddenly made me realise how totally absurd it is that we live our lives this way. 

I think maybe our desperation for holidays stems from a deep-rooted yet deeply unrealistic cultural belief system surrounding work and the value of our lives in society. Extreme hard work makes you a successful, good person. Exciting trips away, “traveling”, are one of the only ways to make your life interesting, satisfying, worth living, and that perhaps in turn makes us better, more interesting people too. It is only possible to relax when you are somewhere that isn’t home. It is only possible to relax after you have worked so hard that you are unwell by the time you even get yourself to the beach. 

I want to challenge these beliefs. I don’t want to spend the dark winter evenings looking up flights, dreaming of being somewhere else. I don’t want to get to the end of another long week at work and feel like my life is going nowhere until I’m on a plane to another country. I don’t want to feel like it is impossible to relax unless I am on a beach with a cocktail in my hand. These things are very nice, of course. But if there’s anything that this global pandemic has taught me, it’s that there is joy to be found in every day. A day at home can feel like a holiday if you want it to. A weekend of day trips and nights in can take your head so far away from work you might as well be in another country. Even a little afternoon coffee break in the sunshine can sometimes be enough to make a normal busy day a happy one.

What I’m trying to say is that we don’t need holidays as much as we think we do. What we need is balance, and we don’t need a week in the south of France to get that. A week in the south of France would be lovely, I’m sure, but it shouldn’t be the thing we hold onto. We need to learn to aim for happiness, relaxation, adventure, and freedom throughout the year, in our everyday lives.

Of course, I realise the irony in the fact that I got all of these thoughts from something I was told on a holiday to Vietnam. I was there for three weeks last summer, and those three weeks in Vietnam got me through my final year at uni. I spent hours in the library, when I should definitely have been writing my dissertation, googling places to stay, sights to see, and food to eat. If I had a bad day, I looked at photos of places we were going to in Vietnam, knowing I just had to make it to the end of the year and I’d be there. When I’d sat my final exams and it was finally time to get on the flight, I almost couldn’t believe it. That trip was one of the best experiences of my life. The things I saw, the foods I tasted, the happiness and freedom I felt, were all unforgettable. I don’t want to never go on holiday again. I don’t think it is silly that it excited me so much. There is definitely something to be said for exploring the beautiful planet we live on; I’m not saying we should stop this. What I am saying is that it is completely ridiculous that I lived my life in such extremes; the uni year was for stress so intense it made me unwell, entire days spent in the library, and working myself silly, while the summer holidays were for relaxation, freedom and adventure. 

My mum always used to tell me that life was all about peaks and troughs, but I think I went a bit overboard. 

Perhaps what is more ironic than the fact that my holiday scepticism began on holiday is the fact that my realisation that relaxation, freedom, and adventure can be found throughout the year occurred during a restrictive national lockdown in which we were only able to leave our homes once a day for essential exercise or to go to the supermarket. But I am so incredibly grateful for the time I was forced to spend at home, and the changes it forced me to make.  

I truly believe that we can find a better balance in our lives, although I appreciate that this is probably easier said than done. Maybe we just need to take more coffee breaks, get out for walks, take spontaneous day trips to pretty places, catch up with friends more often, or have special nights where we make nice food and watch happy films. Or maybe we need to change this cultural attitude that, “a successful career equals a successful life.” Maybe we need a bit of all of these things. A cultural priority shift, with some fun plans thrown in between. 

Currently, we are prioritising the extreme ends of work and life, trying to find a way to cram them both into our year; the amazing adventures alongside the gruelling hard work. We need to iron that out a little. Live life at a simpler, more peaceful pace. There are ways we can do this that don’t have to rely on booking holidays. 

I’ve mentioned the day trips, the nights in, the lovely coffee breaks, the catch ups with friends. These can all help us to live extraordinary, ordinary lives. But for me, the most important thing is gratitude. Life is so much fuller when we are thankful for what we already have in front of us. That is how we can make the ordinary extraordinary. Let me tell you, it’s a lot cheaper than flights to Australia.

Anna Steen is a trainee solicitor and recent Law graduate from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of her food writing at Steen’s Beans.