Seasoned travelers

“Trust me, I’ve been there,” says Zoe Williams

Right – so you did you aummer “staycation” instead of your vacation. You visited fashionable Eastbourne instead of passé Provence, or maybe you went nuclear-trendy and conducted your holiday from the base of your regular home. Well done, you. You have successfully incorporated global current affairs into your routine. I just have to ask, though, what are you, ahem, doing on a plane?

You’ve cracked, haven’t you, you big spineless waffle. You’re leaving the country after all. Going abroad is like an office Christmas party – you think it’s no big deal. You think it doesn’t make any difference to morale. You broke it down into its constituent parts, and decided it was just more hassle than regular life, more personal grooming, more admin, culminating finally in one much greater hangover.

And yet the year isn’t the same without the Christmas party – it’s bad for morale. It’s like a farm with no hedges, or a biscuit with no raisins… or a year with no holiday abroad.

So now that you’re on your way to Barcelona or Prague, or similar, you’ve come face to face with your own lack of resolve and realised “abroad” is critical to your well-being. We can consider the upsides. Perhaps because of the eternal resonance of harvest, but more likely because of memories of secondary school, travelling in autumn has a peculiar and special atmosphere. Major purchases seem strangely reasonable: 200g of white truffle? A floorlength leather coat, a sofa, a pony? Why not? After all, you earned all these things with your frugal summer – and besides, it may be a harsh winter, and then you can eat the pony. The air feels fresh with back-to-school possibility – why stop at a visit? Why not move to Barcelona?

It is not unusual, in this spirit of balmy late-summer rebirth, to start re-evaluating other aspects of life. Are you really happy in it? Wouldn’t you prefer to tread grapes for a living? Sure, sure, it’s not that practical. It’s seasonal, after all, but probably in winter you could find work treading on something else. From here, it is no great leap to thinking again about that lummox you came with. Is she/he really the best you can do? She/he never wears a bandanna, rarely drinks alfresco, can’t play guitar. Is it time to consider your options?

In other words, if summer holidays are for counting your blessings, autumn holidays are for nursing a golden-brown, melancholic dissatisfaction, brought alive by the possibility that you could yet change, if you put your mind to it.

Hmm. On mature consideration, this is probably not a great time to go on holiday, leastways not if you ever want to come back.