flying

Holidays and learning to love coming home

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IMG_7635The worst thing about holidays is that they have to end.

I love being away until that part on your final day when you have to admit that you’re not on holiday any more, you’re just a long way from home.

I find it difficult when my welcome in the country or city I’ve chosen for a break suddenly feels like it’s running out. When you’re no longer a resident of your hotel or apartment, you’re dragging your belongings behind you on wheels, and somebody only has to whisper the word ‘passport’ for you to descend into a blind panic, scrabbling around in your bag for a desperate feel of your documents which are, of course, exactly where they were the last fifty times you checked.

We just got back from Budapest. Leon booked us a city break there for my birthday, which is definitely up there with the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. It was 37 degrees on Tuesday and 32 on Wednesday and every part of me felt like it had melted. I recommend only travelling to countries of this temperature with someone who loves you enough to overlook comments such as ‘Even my shoulders are sweating!’ which are really not in keeping with the romantic getaway vibe.

I love these precious times of the year when we get to go away and pretend that we’re the only two people in the world. When our only concern is where we’re going to go for our next Aperol Spritz or, in Hungary’s case, as many glasses of water as it takes to keep us upright. This isn’t real life by any means, it’s an escape from it, and we all need that from time to time.

When the time came for us to come back, I felt the usual combination of pre-flight angst (Could we accidentally go to the wrong airport? Will there be a big queue at the gate? What if somebody sighs when I ask them to move out of my way on the plane so that I can go to the toilet? Do they not realise that will just make me need to go again really really soon?) and post-holiday blues. Why can’t we stay forever, I wondered, as a woman wheeled a trolley filled with miniature shampoos, conditioners, and shower caps by our hotel room. This place has everything we need.

IMG_7656But rather than really feeling down about our trip being over – which would surely be the ultimate definition of a first world problem anyway – I decided to focus on the good parts of what we were coming back to. If we can’t be here, I thought, I want to be in London.

I said to a friend recently that the relief I feel every time I get back to London tells me for sure that this is where I’m supposed to live. She looked at me with surprise because most people feel the precise opposite way. They will say that the relief they feel when they get the hell out of London tells them that they should live LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE LONDON IS INSANE.

We are all entitled to our opinions. But for me this is the place, certainly for now anyway. I don’t mean Leicester Square or Oxford Street you understand, I’m not mad – I mean London in the broader sense. Its billions of opportunities. Its tube system that I like watching documentaries about. The little corner of this city that I call home.

Home is a hard status to achieve. For years after leaving my mum’s house, which was my home for 18 years, I didn’t give anywhere I lived that title. They were just a variety of buildings to which I hauled my complete Beatles CD collection and extensive range of shoes, and in which I slept but did not truly rest.

But with age and relationships and a little bit of cash to make places your own, home comes. I know that my flat is my home now because I fantasise about being in its bath when I’m out at social events. I know I belong in this house because I dedicate specific hours of the weekend to doing nothing but hang out in it. It’s earned the precious title of home because it’s the base to which my husband and I return each day to chat, to eat snacks, and to recover from having to interact with other human beings.

So yes, it is a shame to have to leave a hot, sunny holiday and to return to daily life. But what’s most important is that you like the life you’re returning to. Because if you don’t, there’s nothing like having to get on a plane and fly back into reality to make you realise it. And in that case, it’s time to make a change, my friend. Listen to your post-holiday head, that guy speaks the truth.

But if you do like it, don’t take that for granted. OK, nobody’s going to deliver free tiny bottles of body lotion to your bedroom tomorrow morning, but otherwise you’ve got it pretty good.

5 questions to ask each other before you fly together

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IMG_4569This post is also published on The Huffington Post.

One of the best things about being alive is the freedom to go on holiday. But one of the worst things about being alive is people who don’t understand how to behave in an airport or during a flight without making everybody around them want to punch them in the emergency exit.

When you’re in a relationship, finding out whether you can go on holiday and remain happy in each other’s company is one of the biggest tests you’ll face. Alongside discovering whether the other person has the brain capacity to remember when bin day is, it’s the issue most likely to break you.

So before you book anything, may I suggest you ask each other the following questions. Best to check you’re travel compatible before you invest to save having to say “Yes, he/she is a MORON” when the good people at customs ask if you have anything to declare.

1. How much of a sense of humour do you have at 3 o’clock in the morning?

Even the most relaxing of holidays can commence with a crack of dawn flight and a ridiculous o’clock alarm. And with that comes a decision – are you going to see past the early start and look ahead to the sun, sea and only using an alarm clock to wake you up in time to make it down for the hotel breakfast two minutes before it closes? Or are you going to be an enraged, under-slept tool from the moment you wake up until the second you go through passport control on the other side? Because if the answer is the latter, do you really want to use up your annual leave allowance finding out what that looks like?

2. Do you like fighting?

There’s a lot of potential argument material during a flight. You could fight about the weight of your luggage and whether you really do need to bring a litre of After Sun with you; about whether you enjoyed being searched by that rather attractive guard at security; or about which one of you deserves to get the aisle seat – the person with the longest legs, or the person who SACRIFICES EVERYTHING FOR THIS RELATIONSHIP. Or you could commit wholeheartedly to just being pleased to be going away and to have the opportunity to justify spending €10 on a packet of Pringles. Up to you.

IMG_38383. What does airport time mean to you?

Do you see an airport as a brightly lit shopping box, filled with last minute purchasing opportunities, drinking holes, and snacks-a-plenty, or as a pale walled holding pen in which you will stand firmly beneath the flight information screen until your gate is announced and you leg it there, knocking any man, woman or child who dares to get in your way to the ground with the sharp end of your wheelie suitcase? You need to know what kind of person you have chosen to spend your life with (and if they’re in the second group, you need to confiscate their passport).

4. How fond are you of sighing?

You know that gentle breeze that flows through every airport across the world? That’s not happening because someone left a door open or because an air steward is using an extra high powered hairdryer; it’s because at least 50% of the airport population is always sighing. And maybe you like that – maybe you’re one of them. But either way you need to know – either so that you can run for the hills as fast as you can because ohforgoodnesssake, or so that you can set yourselves regular alarms to remind you to breathe in as well as out. Seriously guys, be careful.

5. How much do looks matter to you?

Even the most beautiful of people with the best genes and moisturiser aren’t safe from the horrendous effect that air travel has on the human complexion. But are you going to let that go and remember that everybody will look better after a shower and some real air? Or are you going to feel the need to point out how incredible it is that somebody who looks so close to death is still managing to function? It’s a good idea to talk this one through in advance, otherwise somebody may end up with an aeroplane plastic fork somewhere they do NOT want to find a plastic fork.

So what’s the verdict? Are you heading straight online to book the trip of a lifetime with your soulmate, or are you dividing up your things into ‘mine’, ‘yours’ and ‘for the bin’ and waiting for your parents to come and get you the hell out of there?

If it’s the latter then I’m very sorry to hear it but I think it’s for the best. If you want to feel better, just ask them what day they’ll need to put that rubbish out for collection. I’ve got a feeling their answer will confirm you’ve had a lucky escape.