Perhaps he had known that he was actually my second choice of companion: I had wanted my proper best friend to join us but his family were rich (pretend rich, at least) and were off to Disneyworld. It was like he’d forgotten to pack his ability to laugh. On our final family holiday my sister was swapped out for a good friend which turned out to be an utter disaster: my parents didn’t care for him, and I soon realised that someone who was fun for a couple of hours a day at school may not necessarily be as convivial over a fortnight. For some explicable reason the appeal of staying at home without supervision had risen in parallel to the increased speed of our Internet access and suddenly tramping around Albufeira with my parents didn’t seem quite so attractive. Once I sashayed past puberty (a process which only seemed to take a week – I had one afternoon of squeaky voice and then everything seemed to settle, with my beard growing in as my balls dropped as though linked symbiotically in some biological mirror of a Playdoh spaghetti factory) those family holidays became few and far between. It was just far too expensive and we didn’t have much money, plus to use the unquestionable logic of my parents, why visit Florida for thrills and spills when you can be playing 10p bingo above a chip-shop in Seahouses? That sounds like I’m throwing shade against my childhood holidays but that couldn’t be further from the truth: my parents, although poor in money, were rich in experience, and we were always being bundled into the car and whisked away for a weekend of camping or touring the extremities of Scotland whilst being slowly hotboxed in a cherry-red Ford Escort. When I was young, Disney was always a place I wanted to visit but knew I’d never get there. It was my 38 th birthday a couple of weeks ago and boy do I feel ever aware that I’m more than likely halfway through my time sat on this rock. This blog entry was about to start this entry with ‘When I was younger’ and I deleted those words and replaced them with ‘When I was young…’ and if that doesn’t indicate to me how I’ve subconsciously come to terms with my advancing years, I don’t know what will. Anyway, as we inch closer to Disney, let me start by talking about holidays of old.
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