Poona, India A different sort of tourism, with nuns as tour guides

A woman’s pavement home

In a recent communication with one of my university lecturers he said they were just off on holiday in Tunisia. Being full of travellers’ tales I related our experience in Sousse. 

The bus ride from Tunis was awful, several people were sick. The hotel was mediocre. As soon as we stirred out we were besieged by sellers, my three children were scared. There was a Peeping Tom, member of hotel staff, who managed to get to the pool when our 15 year old daughter was there. The children wanted to see the desert, so we hired a car and drove to Kairouan, which has a famous mosque. Before the town we were besieged, again, by boys who swarmed over the car, adverts for restaurants, tickets for the mosque, probably for their sisters for all I know. We found a restaurant, cold; we had couscous, a tourist version. The dishes were pottery, cracked and dirty. I related this to my friend. ‘Kairiouan is on our list, and we are staying in Sousse’. Whoops, but our experience was 50 years ago, hope things are better.

In the old days, before paid holidays, the rich ‘wintered’ on the Riviera, went yachting in the Med, ski-ed in St Moritz. The hoi polloi had Easter Monday on Hampstead Heath, then came a week at Butlins, then package tours to Benidorm. People from Northern England flocked to the sun, laid in it all day and drank cheap booze. So a couple of days were spent with third degree burns and one big headache.

My first holiday was to have been in Portsmouth, with friends of my father’s. I loved the train journey, longest of my life, I think I was twelve. But they had no children and lived in a terraced house. Goodness knows what they were going to do with me. Anyway, I had a panic attack, not childish hysterics, a real one, a doctor was called and, by general agreement, I went home.

The question ‘Is your holiday really necessary’ is because everybody goes on holiday, don’t they? We all have tales, strikes, hours in Gatwick, un-built hotels, a wet fortnight. But years of reading posts here, for many people the organisation, agreement between partners, the journey itself is so stressful you get to your holiday stressed, when all you wanted to do was have two weeks off from the stress of your normal life. After Covid, staycations became popular. We had marvellous holidays on bikes along the tow-paths of the French canals, no car responsibility, no parking hassle. Six organised holidays in Corsica, the tour operator took the strain. I think the first couple days of your ‘holiday’ (rename ‘away from work’) need to be spent getting in the mood to relax. Do you plan meticulously; spend the winter looking at brochures for the summer? Or just see ‘how the maggot bites’ a favourite saying of Mr G. 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member