Becky Bond Writes
Covid19 Holiday
My View - Wednesday 1st April 2020
When all this is over I’m going on holiday. Ideally without my family. It’s not that I don’t love them and all that but if this lockdown has taught me anything it’s that you can have too much of a good thing.
I definitely won’t be going camping with them. We did our time under canvas when they were at a comparatively cute age. I drew the line under that whole rigmarole when I found myself stranded in a glamping pod in Haworth without functioning facilities. The emergency forced me to swiftly re-purpose the biscuit tin and a sandwich bag and I still worry I caused the toddlers some kind of low level psychological damage. No child needs to see mummy doing that in shortbread tub.
We’re not going sailing in Scotland to catch lobsters either. Even if the crustacean’s tails held a nugget of gold inside, nothing would make me repeat the moment when my brother convinced my family that if we wore woolly mittens with our wetsuits, we’d probably be safe in a force nine gale. I was numb with cold and fear for a solid twelve hours afterwards.
An activity holiday is also off the agenda because much as I love to play the involved-mum card, badminton before 10 in the morning isn’t natural. Nor is pony trekking (at any time of the day) or joining everybody else’s children in a wave-pool disco.
I’m toying with the idea of booking flights for the four of us, then on the morning of the trip, pretending to lose my passport. I’ll be a martyr and insist they go ahead without me while I sort out the paperwork and join them later. Then I’ll head back home and secretly complete a 2000-thousand-piece jigsaw, read books and finally make use of that bread flour.
In peace, I might even indulge in a bit of Joe Wicks. As I do so, I’ll pop on my rose-tinted glasses and look back wistfully at all the times when the four of us have spent weeks together without structure. Carefree meals where nothing I’ve made suits everybody. Rambling walks punctuated with complaints such as aching ankles, itchy ankles or simply the wrong shaped ankles for the perfectly suitable boots.
I’ll watch a film from beginning to end without having to pause it to question if someone has left the bath running upstairs. The movie will be one of my choice, at the correct volume, in the best chair. And I’ll cry if I want to.
When it’s time for bed I won’t have to queue outside my own bathroom to clean my teeth and when I walk in, the floor will be dry, the towels will be straight and I won’t sprain my thumb gouging out the final millimetre of toothpaste.
Then I’ll saunter to my bedroom without tripping over a school shoe, flop onto my bed featuring perfectly-positioned scatter cushions and text the family group chat: nightmare at the passport office – it's shut forever.
