The Times Magazine 5y kids have just left
to go on holiday, with
friends, to America.
It’s their first holiday
without us – at 18 and
21, they “should” have
holidayed without
their parents much
earlier, but Covid
obviously derailed a couple of prime holidaying
years into sitting in a kitchen with us, antibac-
ing individual oranges, doing jigsaws and
worrying that civilisation had ended.
As a seasoned traveller – I’ve both spent
nine hours in Chicago O’Hare airport waiting
for a connecting flight to Wisconsin and done
a week at a caravan park with a club building
called “the Freaky Fun Lounge” – I have
much true life-hack travel advice for them.
Unfortunately, I only thought of it after they
left, as they shouted, “And don’t text us with
any advice – because all your advice is overly
detailed and makes us oddly anxious. Bye!”
And so I’m going to have to put all my
advice here, in case your children are off on
their first holidays without you, and you want
to make them anxious instead.- In hotels, take a picture of your hotel room
door as you enter. That way, later – when you
are drunk, lost and bitter about living in a
world of bland corporate keycards that don’t
have your room number on them – you can
simply look on your phone, note you are in
room 2404, and not fall asleep in the corridor
next to the ice machine. - Time your meals around visits to art galleries
and museums. Their cafés have the best food
in central city locations – as middle-class
culture-ponces will not tolerate substandard
smoked salmon, potato salad or cake. - Don’t ever go on a banana boat in a bikini.
The forces of wind and wave will eventually
internalise your bikini bottoms into your
sacred woman-space. Even if they don’t, your
tits are absolutely making a break for freedom. - Bear in mind that, if you’re holidaying with
friends and/or family, Day Four is the most
likely day for you to have a massive row. For
the first three days, you’re all on best behaviour.
By Day Four, however, the person now known
as “the supplicant who got the shit bed” is
down on their sleep, there’s probably a couple
of rolling hangovers, and the people with
ADHD will be rubbing up the people who’ve
tested INTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale the
M
CAITLIN MORAN
My tip? Don’t go on a banana boat in a bikini!
Our kids are off without us. This is what they need to know
ROBERT WILSON
wrong way. On Day Four, everyone should
isolate from each other, and only really
meet up again on Day Six – when all the
conversations about “how to get to the
airport” will rebond the group once more.- When you’re young, I think it’s tempting
to think of holidays as being a kind of
unreal, perfectible experience: a chance to
have a week in which every meal, outfit,
conversation, sunset and kiss is exquisite, and
your Instagram will duly bear witness to a
ceaseless parade of exemplary moments.
Consequently, if, on Wednesday, one
member of your group orders one disappointing
crab roll, there is a danger that the whole
party can enter a Dismay Spiral. Four hours
later and the anxiety over possible Future
Suboptimal Moments can get so out of control
that the most control-freaky member of the
group is researching the possibility of taking
out “disenchantment insurance” on Thursday’s
donkey trek, in case one of the animals has
unbearably “sad” eyes or breaks wind.
As you get older, however, you realise the
best attitude to go on holiday with is to treat it
as “exactly like normal life – but in a different
place”. Like every other day of the year, you’re
just as likely to be bored, irritated, annoyed and
let down by a pair of trousers that somehow
look “wrong” by 2pm. Statistically, young
travellers are far more likely to suffer from
upsetting Expectation Deflation than they are
any of the things we warn them about – losing
their passports, having their drinks spiked or
having their toenail ripped off by an automatic
bus door because they’re wearing flip-flops,
which did happen to a friend of mine in Cuba,
as I kept telling the girls. Sidebar: when you
go to a hospital in Cuba, they ask you if you
know anyone who has any anaesthetic. This is
why I’ve told the girls never to go to Cuba, to
always buy morphine if offered it and never
wear flip-flops. Honestly, you might as well be
wearing a paper plate on your foot.
Anyway, as you read this, they’ll be in
New York, wearing stout walking boots,
eschewing bus doors, and braced for the small
yet inevitable disappointments of life. At least,
that’s what they’ve told me. I am also aware
that, many years ago, I told them that the very
best bit of advice is never to tell your parents
what you’re actually doing on holiday – or
they’ll somehow ruin it by telling too many
anecdotes about their holidays, and fretting.
I suspect this might be the one piece of advice
they listened to. Good for them. n
Take a photo of your
hotel room door, for
when you are lost and
drunk. And beware
the Day Four Row