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recently
went away
for a week’s I holiday with my
husband. Well,
six days, because I got a
last-minute writing commission
that I needed to stay at home
to do. And really, it was five
days because he spent the
first day bellowing instructions down the phone to
the new manager he had left in charge of his office.
And I had two other articles to write while I was
there because I hadn’t quite managed to clear them
off my desk by the time we left. And my editor forgot
I was on holiday and rang to commission a third and,
as I was already at my laptop, I thought I might as
well. After all, it’s not like I was missing out on quality
time with my puce-faced husband, who was busy
checking his email and firing off memos and letters
to avert and contain further disasters. All in all, it was
a relief to get home.
When I was a teenager, I used to picture a
grown-up holiday as a fortnight of ceaseless glamour.
Possibly I had drunk too deeply at the pool of Judith
Krantz and Shirley Conran, to say nothing of my
insatiable thirst for Hollywood biographies, but
I always envisioned myself lounging g g by y the ppool in a
Grace Kelly-esque bathing hing suit, sipping cool drinks
out of tall glasses under er
a still, blue sky. The only y
thing that would disturb b
my peace would be the e
lapping of the Pacific
waves, the clink of ice
cubes and the rustle as s
I turned the pages of a
new bonkbuster (it was
not enough, evidently, to
live inside one, I had to
be reading one too. Ah, ,
what an unfettered
sybarite I was).
In this, as in so
much else, real life was s
doomed to disappoint.
My misshapen little
body can no more pull
off a Grace Kelly
swimsuit than it can
afford an Hermès
handbag. We can’t lie in n
the sun any more without out
taking a constant mental al
inventory of all the moles les
on our tender persons
“A RELAXING HOLIDAY
IS A LOST IDYLL”
Holiday season may well be upon us, but for many women, even when lazing
on a deserted island, mojito in hand, switching off is an impossible dream,
says the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan
just waiting to turn melanomic under the unforgiving
ultraviolet rays. Drinking in the middle of the day
now makes me pass out before I’m halfway through
the first cocktail. And last, but by no means least, the
idea of two weeks of uninterrupted silence has
become a joke. A lost idyll. A historical concept.
The age of the ‘CrackBerry’ is upon us and there
ain’t no going back.
It has become virtually impossible to take a
holiday, a real holiday. The phrase ‘getting away
from it all’ now sounds as antique as a ‘Winston
tastes good like a cigarette should’ or ‘Kitchener
needs YOU!’ Nowhere is unreachable now or at least
nowhere that will fulfil your other requirements for
a two-week break, unless anthropological research
on ancient Patagonian tribes is your thing – and good
luck getting a Ryanair flight there.
“Just switch your phone off!” some will cry. “Just
don’t take your laptop,” others will suggest, possibly
rolling their eyes at the boundlessness of your
stupidity in failing to adopt this simple solution.
This, of course, is the counsel of fools. Or if not
fools, people without an ounce of imagination or
empathy. For there are innumerable problems with
these suggestions.
It presupposes, for example, that you don’t have a
boss who will expect to get hold of you in an
‘emergency’. g y I put p the word in quotes q because the
eternal sub-problem here is how differently you and
eternal sub-problem here is how differently you and It sounds like madness,
Greetings Greetings from from Mauritius Mauritius
OPINION
your boss define the term. A friend of mine was once
getting hot and heavy with a delightful, lightly muscled
young man with whom she had recently formed an
intense, non-intellectual relationship in the Canary
Islands, when her office overlord rang to demand, as a
matter of utmost urgency, that she talk him through
the operation of the conference room’s new coffee
machine. She faked static on the line, but the mood
had alas evaporated at the first ring.
It also assumes that just because you don’t take
these things away with you, work, problems and admin
nightmares won’t build up in your absence. Most of us
“THE AGE OF THE
‘CRACKBERRY’ IS UPON
US AND THERE AIN’T
NO GOING BACK”
do not have jobs in a plentifully overstaffed firm in
which there are plenty of willing and able people to
pick up the slack while we’re gone. Most of us are
therefore overworked to some degree and also not
able to clear our desks as fully as we had hoped in the
weeks leading up to our precious holiday. So a little bit
of work is bound to bleed into the first few days. And
maybe a bit of preparation on the last few days of our
so-called ‘break’ won’t hurt either.
It sounds like madness, but the anxiety over what
might mig be accruing and the
mountains mo which may have to
be faced when we get back is
often oft more debilitating
than tha just keeping an eye on
things thi while you’re gone and
knowing kn you can nip any
potential po catastrophes in the
bud. bu That’s what passes
for fo a relaxed frame of mind
these th days.
The best thing you can do
for fo yourself is just accept it.
Of O course, do your best to
meet m your deadlines
beforehand, be leave helpful
memos m for your cover,
remind re your boss that you
are ar ‘On Holiday. Oh, And Also
Not N Your Slave’ (but nicely)
and an minimise those office
incursions in but, after that,
accept ac that you will never be
entirely e out of reach. That
way, w paradoxically, does
ppeace – if not quite
qquiet – lie.
IF ONLY THE WAVES WOULD
WASH ALL THE WORK AWAY
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