“My holiday memories are a bit stuck on quite dreadful”

AS USUAL this January, I didn’t start to think of myself as a to-do list and race around at warp speed, signing up for pilates and beginner’s Italian.

I haven’t even achieved the two goals I set myself for January: to clip the dog and renew my passport. All I’ve done so far in 2012 is think rather more often about holidays than I usually do.

Mainly, I’ve thought about the term ‘Family Holiday’ but more specifically how the term ‘Family Life Abroad’ is much better suited to the reality.

My holiday memories are a bit stuck on ‘quite dreadful’. I’ve tried to unstick them; in my mind’s eye I’ve scrolled through the many positive experiences we’ve shared as a family abroad but my thoughts keep returning, like homing pigeons, to one specific family holiday: France, 2007.

Family Life Abroad is a delicate infrastructure and certain key elements underpin it: attractive location for example and decent local amenities. Pleasant lodgings and fit-for-purpose plumbing systems are vital supports but maps, directions and timing are fundamental too. Family dynamics — which, along with the sun block, you can never leave behind on the kitchen table — are the fulcrum around which everything else pivots, but then so is sunshine — obviously — since that’s what abroad is about.

When all these crucial elements buckle, family life abroad can collapse.

As in France, 2007.

On timing: The trip occurred shortly before our eldest two flew the nest but just after they’d grown out of family holidays. Both would have much preferred to liquoring up under strobe lights in Magaluf for two weeks. This meant they sat like sullen overgrown cuckoos in the back of the car and ruined things for anyone who wanted to sing “we’re all going on a summer holiday” as we set off. It transpired that setting off was the peak time for holiday humour.

On good weather: Maxing out the credit card and crossing continents so that you can point at the sky for two weeks saying ‘I think it’s going to clear up this afternoon once that big black cloud has gone’, is deeply, deeply galling.

On location: Check population and human demographics statistics before you go or you might end up in a village like ours, which was identical to the one in Chitty Bang Bang, the one that was emptied by the child-catcher. Our village was wholly child-free, so empty in fact that every time we drove through it both sullen cuckoos said “where the **** are the French?”

On family dynamics: You try putting six people into a hot car and driving thousands of miles with one Thumbelina DVD for entertainment. See if you can do any better.

On maps and directions: There is only so much “I can’t believe you forgot them” that a woman can take on the Boulevard Peripherique, which is a road actually designed in such a way as to stop you finding the right exit ever, even if you had a map.

On local amenities: 1. Stagnant canals upon which we floated in canoes, terrified of capsizing in case large French water rats called Ragondins bit us on the arse. 2. A pool in the next village, about which the sullen cuckoos said, “you’d have to be sooooo bored to do that”. Three nights on the trot watching Thumbelina soon changed their minds.

On lodgings: All I can say is, ‘it didn’t look like that online’ doesn’t come anywhere near it and nowhere on the website was there written anything such as ‘no mod-cons, bedding or other useful household items’, even in the small print.

On associated plumbing systems: ‘DO NOT PUT TOILET PAPER IN TOILET’ the sign said. I told them all to read it. Three days, one fractious French plumber and €200 later we were back in business, but not before my husband had thrown up twice while trying to fix it himself.

These are my holiday thoughts so far. I thought it was worth sharing them with those of you who might not make it abroad this year.