Holidays and Holiday smugness and I hate the Guardian

[sick as a pike]

Cutting edge me was only just reading last Saturday's Guardian Travel section.
I am now enraged. Oh yes, ENRAGED.
Well, vaguely  grumpy.

It's been a long, long time since I looked at life from above, since England, the house I live in, its worries, have shrunk into a speck then been obliterated by clouds, darkness and the cadences of dodgy in-flight music. Not for three years had I left the country, unable to scale the iceberg of £15,000 student debt. The contours of my world stretched from Manchester to London, finally shrivelling to the dimensions of a computer-screen with a spinning green and blue globe of a screensaver to taunt me each day.
Strange things happen to time, space and perspective if you don't have holidays: my early 20s have slipped down a rabbit hole, vanished, as if I'd become stuck in an eternal present tense. As if I had stopped revolving, or evolving […]

Link.

Well of course you haven't left the country on holiday, you're £15,000 in debt, you maniac.
Do other people find it odd that someone not having an overseas holiday for three years is being held up as an extraordinary state of affairs and an unfair deprivation of basic human rights? (I paraphrase slightly)

In the interests of looking smugly Puritanical (though startlingly unambitious) I thought I'd list Mr Pike's holidays taken since being an adult (edit: defining adult in this case as 18, when I left the parental home)
1984-1986- nothing
1987- week in York
1988-1997 no holidays
1998- weekend in Cambridge
1999- week in Dartmouth
2000- four days in Dublin
2001- week in St Mawes
2002- week in Falmouth
2003- nothing
2004- week in Falmouth
2005- week in Penzance
2006- week in Millbrook (Cornwall)
2007- nothing planned

Be angry too, or tell me I'm  the odd one or just list holidays if you want.  I don't care, I've stopped revolving, or evolving.

[Jack Shaftoe]

I never read travel sections because of Simon Calder, and rage, and the Simon Calder rage. Interesting that the tone of the Guardian Travel supplement and From Our Own Correspondent have exactly the same smug portentious tone of people who seem to genuinely think someone will be reading their words in a hundred years time.

Between 1996 and 2003 all my holidays consisted of going to Cornwall, which was a bit shit, since that's where I'm from. Recently I have spent quite a lot of time in  the South of France, but  that ended in a cremation.

[Milo]

I've got £15,000 of student debt but as it's paid off at a rate of £2 per month it doesn't impact too much on my holiday plans.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I haven't gone away on holiday for...what is it?...four years. Six if long weekends don't count. Watch out for my column!

My parents took me on holiday very year when I was a child. It was just what parents did. Can't afford it myself though. I don't know anyone who can.

[Milo]

Thinking about it... since reaching adulthood some 8 years ago I've only been on hols once. Long weekend to Amsterdam which cost £400. And that was within the last year. I've been so deprived.

Or more realistically, I don't really think holidays are worth the money.

[Jack Shaftoe]

I don't see the point of foreign holidays if you can't actually go to Narnia, or somewhere off Warcraft, or back in time to Regency England and that. Most of the planet just looks a bit samey to me, in comparison. Sometimes I think I might just be spectatularly dull. But I'm okay with it.

[Peking O]

I travel as much as I can. I can't stand the idea of not seeing a big portion of the globe before I go. Usually when I want to go somewhere I take on extra work so I can afford it. If some debts arise I can always pay those off later.

You don't have to spend stupid money to go on holiday. As I mentioned in another thread, I'm just back from a week in Mexico, which was a cheap last minute deal for the flight. The costs of hotels, food, etc. in Mexico is ridiculously cheap, so I didn't have to worry about that too much.

How do people cope with not taking holidays? I'm always planning little (and big) trips, working out how I can get from x to y on the cheap. The world of work is depressing enough as it is, if I couldn't escape from it for a while I'd probably go completely insane.

[Neville Chamberlain]

You should be the darling of the environemtal movement, which is the most regressive, misanthropistic and reactionary movement you're ever likely to meet, bunch of cunts.

[SOTS]

My number of holidays has dwindled to almost nothing as well.

1995 - Norfolk
1996 - Worcestershire
1997 - Somerset
1998 - Yorkshire, I think.
1999 - Wales.
2000 - Ireland in Summer and the Amsterdam in October.
2001 - The US of A. Three weeks in October. Biggest and best holiday.
2002 - Dorset
2003 - Yorkshire. Again.
2004 - A couple of days in Manchester.
2005 - London, twice. The first time for for days, the second for two.
2006 - Fuck all.
2007-  Fuck all, probably.

We always used to go on family holidays to a corner of the UK we hadn't yet visited. As I got older, my interest in these holidays dwindled which means that I don't go anywhere nowadays. I don't even have the money to go anywhere with my friends.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've gone to at least one festival every year from 95 - 2005, but I haven't gone away for a whole week anywhere since I was 16, and I'm 32 now. It's not a good state of affairs, but a lack of funds has always prevented me from doing so. I suppose I could have scrimped and saved over the last few years to get away, but being single in a world of married friends with children has meant I'd have no one to go with anyway, and holidaying alone just isn't my cup of tea.

Bah. This has just made me realise how desperately I do want to get away. But it won't happen this year frustratingly.

[Beck]

I went Lanzarote when I was seven and the highlight was riding around on a large, furry, mechanical coin-operated mammoth.

And that's the end of my collection of holiday-based anecdotes.

[El Unicornio, mang]

How do people cope with not taking holidays? I'm always planning little (and big) trips, working out how I can get from x to y on the cheap. The world of work is depressing enough as it is, if I couldn't escape from it for a while I'd probably go completely insane.

Aren't you in the US Peking? Don't you find it hard getting time to go on holiday with the measly 2 weeks vacation time they give us here?

[the midnight watch baboon]

Went to California and Las Vegas last year with my 'fuck off and don't come back' pay off from work, NYC few years before with my 'you clumsy cunt here's some money for being injured in your workplace', Barcelona, Malaga, Crete and Amsterdam also have hosted me in recent years by being cheap, rather than enticing. Probably camping in lakes this year.

[The Mumbler]

I count going to stay with friends as a holiday.  Actually, I count visiting my mum (who lives by the sea) as a holiday.

Other than that:

1996: Three weeks in Canada and the USA. Which I was only able to afford on account of an unexpectedly lucrative assignment. Fortunately, it was a fucking brilliant holiday.
2002: A week in Cornwall (disastrous, since you ask).

It's like people who can afford to buy a house in London. Where are people getting the money from to go abroad every year?

[Marvin]

Holidays don't need to be at all expensive unless you're just lazy and use package companies, not in Europe at least. I'm on a very tiny income the majority of the time but I've comfortably afforded trips to the Algarve, Rome, Ireland, Paris and some other bits of France in the last couple of years, as well as a huge amount of travelling round Britian. I couldn't cope without a bit of travelling every now and then.

[samadriel]

Probably camping in lakes this year.

Don't forget your wellies.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

I've spent loadsa time in America over the past few years, but it's different for me because my girlfriend's American so I have no accomodation costs and I just do stuff that normal people do over there, I don't really go at it like a tourist. I rather enjoy getting to experience the mundane side of life in another country. You know, things like doing the shopping and the bits of the city tourists wouldn't see.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

I'm going off to Atlanta tomorrow to do a similar sort of thing to what SPC describes above.  Going to Spain with the lads next month too, then off to Le Mans in June.

I don't normally have this many holidays, just got a flurry of them coming up.  Yes, I know I'm raping the environment.

One thing that fucks me off more than the article in the opening post is when cunts like that go off on holiday and call themselves "travellers" to try and differentiate themselves from the tourist crowd that they are actually part of.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Poor old Wilbur would be frothing at the mouth reading this thread!

[Cupid Stunt]

As an army family we travelled quite a bit anyway but hardly ever went on 'holiday'.  My parents said they couldn't afford it because they had to pay boarding school fees for us while they were stationed abroad - which seemed to me a double whammy if ever there was one.  Like being told you can't have an ice cream because the money is being used to pay this man to punch you in the nose.  I only had two childhood holidays and they were both canal boat holidays in the UK.  On one of them my dad got bitten by a dog which consequently had to be euthanased, which was all very upsetting.  On the other, we took a wrong turn and ended up drifting through late-70s derelict industrial Birmingham/Wolverhampton, picking our way through discarded tyres and shopping trollies.  I got hit in the back of the head with a low bridge, and in the front of the head with a lock winch.  It's probably just as well we didn't go on holiday that often.

Probably as a result of this I'm quite unadventurous myself.  I flew to Italy in 2005 to attend my brother's wedding - that was my first flight since 1989, when we last came back from living abroad.  In 1991 I went to Paris for the weekend on the coach/ferry.  That was my last trip out of the country, I've been on a few UK-based 'holidays' since then but usually staying with friends/family.  It's strange, because in my late teens I went through quite a phase of wanting to travel the world, and would spend time poring over brochures planning round-the-world routes.  But I just never got the money together, and then the urge left me as I gradually acquired a Real Life.

My experience of Italy was that it was all very nice and very picturesque, but the picture was a bit spoiled by having this great white sweating oaf lumbering about and awkwardly trying to use a few Italian phrases and being too overdressed.  In one touristy marketplace, every stall holder instantly knew we were British.  I was outraged - we could've been German!  I think idyllic travelogues and colour-drenched brochures are best enjoyed from the comfort of your own comfortably temperate home, and any attempt to actually visit the world's beauty spots will inevitably be a disappointment.  After all, the brochure photos wouldn't be nearly so attractive if they had YOU in them, would they?

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I love canal boating. You should be very careful though - no leaping around locks!

[Cupid Stunt]

Oh don't get me wrong, I would love to give canal boating another go.  Without my catastrophe-prone parents.  Trouble is, it does seem to be rather overpriced in the summer season, unless you've got a big group of you going to split the cost, which would rather spoil the quiet/idyllic daydream I have in mind.  And I don't know five other people with shite taste in holidays.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hmmm....*stretches brain horribly*

1990- Boxton, Derbyshire....4th birthday and I got sunstroke it was 38C!!
1991- Peak District.....hardly remember it....
1992- Yorkshire somewhere....hardly remember it
1993- Scarborough/Filey/Hornsea....it was sunny
1994- Provence, France (first trip abroad)....I was sick on the way to Grasse...I saw a lizard....it was dusty...
1995- Dordogne, France...lots of chateau's on that one
1996- Wales and Dorset (Wot, no abroad?).....wales was wet, dorset was dull
1997- Provence, France, and Viareggio, Italy.....first time in Italy, great holiday....
1998- Loire Valley, France.....more chateau's and wine-tasting....
1999- Provence and Gironde, France.....very very thunderstormy, and met parasol girl...
2000- Siena, Italy and Narbonne, France......Siena is brilliant, Narbonne was a bit run down...
2001- Tuscany, Italy and La Rochelle, France.....went to Fort Boyard...and La Rochelle has the best aquarium I've been to.
2002- No Dice.
2003- Went to New York for a week on a school-arranged jobby in 6th form. Great stuff, a lot of fun. Would've had more fun now though, I think.
2004-Nowt
2005-Nowt
2006-Nowt
2007- I'm off to Cologne in June, and bloody looking forward to it an' all.

[Peking O]

Aren't you in the US Peking? Don't you find it hard getting time to go on holiday with the measly 2 weeks vacation time they give us here?

Initially I did only get two weeks, yeah. It drove me pretty crazy. I get four weeks now. The American work ethic is fucked up. I regularly rant about it to people, who are often gobsmacked when I tell them how much holiday/vacation time people get in various countries in Europe.

[sick as a pike]

Does that two weeks include public holidays, yer Christmas and NooYears etc?

[Peking O]

No, those are separate. The public holidays are slightly different here - no Boxing Day of course, and I don't get any time off for Easter. But I am surrounded by Jews...

[Emma Raducanu]

I have a dream of flying out to Asia, getting lost and never returning.

[Jemble Fred]

I'm not xenophobic, but I'm also unashamed that my entire experience of Abroadland is a business trip to Paris a few years ago that lasted from around 12 noon until 5PM â€" plane to taxi to office, and back.

I've never had the time nor money to go abroad, and indeed haven't had what can be termed a 'holiday' since I was young enough for my parents to drag me to a drab week at the caravan in Barmouth when I was 15.

There are many places I'd like to visit, all round the world, but I won't feel I've missed out if I never get round to them. There are hundreds of places in the UK I still have to visit too, so I may as well start there.

[Banana Woofwoof]

Belfast.  Always fucking Belfast.  And it's not a holiday if you have to sleep in your little brother's wanked on bed.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Belfast.  Always fucking Belfast.  And it's not a holiday if you have to sleep in your little brother's wanked on bed.

It's not!? Some men in Japan pay for that kind of thing.