It was summer 2017. My mother wanted to take my nephew
somewhere for a holiday (or vacation, for the Americans reading this). I
thought about one day going to London to see the Science Museum. She used this
as an excuse for a trip to London for the three of us.
She asked a couple of parents while my nephew was in his
swimming club about holidays and how to arrange them. One day she came to my
place to get me to book the hotel and flight (They suggested flying there as it
was fast, allowing extra time in London.). I struggled. Found a hotel and
booked a room, but finding a flight was a nightmare. London has 4-5 airports,
with Heathrow been the most well-known. Naturally, we tried to get a flight to
there. In the end, she went to a travel agent and had the holiday arranged
there … six days before departure!
Because of her various hospital appointments there was only
one window for the trip. But to me it was too soon. A lot of pressures at my
end made the idea of going on a plane for the first time in ten years too
stressful. Just two days before the trip I told my mother I was not able to go.
But she still wanted to take my nephew on a trip so they went there without me.
They had a good time.
But here’s the thing – why do we do this? Why do many of us
(every year) go through the stress of finding brochures, trips to photo booths
and filling out forms for passports, looking up price-comparison websites,
buying new swimsuits, arranging taxis to take us to airports or harbours in
hours where milkmen and yokai roam the streets, and getting legally-sanctioned
harassed by guys in uniform because of a half-empty bottle of water that use to
contain over 100ml of liquid? Why all this annual collective madness every
summer (and winter, for the skiing)?
To be honest with you, I don’t find holidays that
interesting. I find them mostly as an inconvenience rather than a pleasure. I
really don’t like high temperatures. I don’t sunbath. I don’t dance in discos.
I rarely eat exotic food. In fact, the only thing I mostly do while on holiday
is draw or write stuff – mostly in the shelter of my hotel
room/cabin/tent/caravan. I could have just stayed at home and done the same
things, but other people insist I should “go out and explore.” Although the odd
experience has been great, such as Disneyland, but if I had a teleporter I
would use it instead of going through the hassle of navigating to an airport,
have my luggage inspected by strangers in uniform that actually give you the
image of exploding planes instead of safe flying and arranging a place to sleep
when I get there. I know some will say “the journey is the best part of the
trip than the destination,” and I agree with you, especially when it comes as a
narrative device in fiction. But really, have you ever had to look up the
timetables for flights to and from London?
I have been like this since I was a child and that is not
going to change anytime soon.
So why do we “go on holiday?”
With what happened recently with London I have been thinking
about all this.
I think one major component in our collective need to travel
is to do with “social bragging.” For a long time in history long-distance
travel was hard … and expensive. Naturally (until recently), only the rich
could afford to take such long trips for non-essential reasons, like sketching
the ruins in Greece and Rome or shooting a wild tiger for its fur and bragging
rights at the hunting lodge. Even though today a plane ticket from the UK to
Spain can cost as little as a large family’s weekly groceries the act of travelling
a long distance for pleasure still has a whiff of snobbery about it, even if
the destination is basically alternative version of home where the climate is
different.
But, of course, this snobbery has evolved over the years.
Back in the 18th century Londoners would have considered going to
Bristol exotic. But as transport technology improved, so did our ambitions to
travel further form home. In 1900, going to Paris from London was a challenge,
making the city a desirable location for holidays. Paris still is a desirable
location for a trip. Any grand tour of Europe demands at least one stop in the
city. But its desirability has fallen since the Channel Tunnel made the trip to
it a simple one-hour train ride from London. The Mediterranean also went through
this. Until the 1960s the only English-speaking people going there were rich
people, artists, and the occasional journalist. Since the package holiday
opened up the Med to many the only true way an Englishman can show off about
going there is buying a second home there (although Brexit may make such things
harder in the future). During my lifetime travelling from Europe to America or
the Far-East became more affordable. As a child, I went to Florida a few times
to go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. If I had been born a decade earlier
such adventures would have been just out of reach of my dad’s salary. Now I may
consider going to Tokyo one day - within the next decade or so.
It was a factor in my mother’s decision to take my nephew to
London. His friends have gone on holidays to various places, including Florida
(where she plans to take him in 2018), and she thought he was been deprived of
something if he didn’t go somewhere. She was taking me on holidays almost every
summer at his age, but her ill health in the past decade or so has prevented
that. This trip to London was his first proper vacation (He has been on
two-to-three-day coach trips to England and a week in a caravan park before, by
the way.).
But there is another factor in our desire to travel. And it’s
one that most people would say if you asked why they do it – to get away from
it all and try something new. Today many of us can expect to live past 70 years
(antibiotic-resistant bacteria permitting) and our world is a big place full of
interesting things and sensory experiences, like big canyons, underwater light
shows, and feats of achievement that have made people think “There is no ways
humans can build that on their own back then. They must have had aliens to help
them.” It is considered a massive shame for a creature that has a capacity to
wonder to be denied the chance to explore such a large sensory-scape. In fact,
it can be considered a crime to do just that.
Just over a century or so ago, not many of our ancestors had
that chance. Most spent their shorter lives mostly within the same dozen square
miles. Many things prevented them from doing so than just the cost of travel.
Today they are still things that prevent us from travelling, but the cost of
travel shouldn’t be. The only things that should prevent one from travelling
are bureaucracy and politics … and diseases.
Because of what happened I made a brave decision – I plan to
go to London …. by plane
… on my own!!!
November 2017 addition
I just found this interesting video from 1979, featuring the voice of John Cleese....
Monty Python - Away from it all (1979)
