“Ignore fantasy prep and learn from my mistakes”

SOMETIMES, the fortnight’s holiday abroad can be squeezed out by the combined effect of the two weeks that bookend it.

A bit like the sliver of filling in a custard cream, squished out by the two rectangles of dry biscuit.

The week of pre-holiday preparation is never the “Hotel du Cap: Your Capsule Wardrobe,” fantasy sort, which magazines shout about, but the actual kind of prep instead; the kind where you put your head down, the Marigolds on, and battle through that A4 page covered in joyless words like dog food, bins, laundry, fridge, toilets, bank, keys, cars, bags and Ryanair — each word appended by even more dismal ones such as sort, find, organise, empty, scour and check.

The creamy stuff in the middle — the abroad bit — can swing one of two ways.

Best case scenario: life’s tight plot will suddenly go blissfully loose as you lie under blue skies as clean and clear as the inside of a painted cup, and the stress of the holiday prep trickles out of you, like water through cupped palms.

Worst case scenario (my husband’s archives): you click “no travel insurance” in the drop-down menu, and then shoot out all your front teeth with the back end of a harpoon gun on Paros.

The holiday itself, whichever way it swings, is a well-documented, exhaustively discussed phenomenon, which is something that can’t be said about the business of homecoming.

No-one talks about homecoming. On the matter of returning home from abroad, all I hear are mild-mannered stories, as dull as — well — a dry biscuit, which approximate to little more than “home: you can’t beat Barry’s tea, truth be told”.

How odd. Some of my homecoming experiences have been so fraught with titanic tribulations that they’ve eclipsed the holidays that preceded them. On these occasions, “I want to stab myself in the head” has been a much better fit.

How then to account for these experiences? Well, let’s have a look — it could be a salutary exercise for those of you contemplating a last minute dash abroad. Put down the travel supplement, ignore the fantasy prep and learn from my mistakes.

Here is an account of my all-time hellish homecoming, and how to avoid such a thing:

1. Depart Sardinia 09:00 hrs.

2. Land Farranfore airport 23:30, in black monsoon.

3. Lug suitcases to car.

4. Fill up diesel car with petrol.

5. Break down in wilderness.

6. Big fight with spouse, who filled up tank, in wilderness.

7. Arrive home, eyes crossed from exhaustion.

8. Open front door.

9. Assaulted by smell of alcohol as feet stick to floor.

10. Follow trail of Heineken ring-pulls to kitchen table.

11. On table, find remains of piss-up and fry-up for the county, plus note from 17-year-old son.

12. Read note: “Welcome back. All good here. But someone dropped a tub of Vaseline down toilet and some eejit tried to push it down with a toilet roll. I’ll explain later when I’m back. Sorry.”

13. Wander up and down stairs in daze.

14. Develop heart arrhythmia: house looks as if it’s been deconstructed, then reconstructed by someone who has no idea whatsoever of what it looked like in the first place.

15. Think that the reconstruction effort is commendable, for someone who has no idea of what the house looked like in the first place.

16. Decide it’s not commendable for someone like my son, who’s lived in it for 16 years.

17. Reach upstairs toilet.

18. Find that the toilet is tipping point for arrhythmia.

19. Heartbeat syncopates and starts doing staccato jog: toilet is frothing over rim.

Now for the advice: never string the following three sentences together and utter them aloud within earshot of your teenagers:

a. “We understand your reluctance to come on this family holiday.”

b. “Dad and I feel that you are old enough to be responsible and sensible.”

c. “We’ve decided to leave you in charge of our house while we are gone.”

Simple advice but so effective that after following it myself this year, all I can find to say on the matter of my recent homecoming is, “you can’t beat Barry’s tea, truth be told.”

Result!