Deborah Hill Cone: No puffy silk pillows? That's living rough

Our bach is a bach. More Third World shack than Omaha McMansion. Part of it has a concrete floor - but not one of those polished ones with underfloor heating. Real concrete. It is really difficult to clean that. So I don't.

And anyway there are mod cons: books, pot-bellied stove, lumpy sofas and an impressive empty Campari bottle collection. Other compensations: no punters, no wankers, no Super City, no cell coverage, no television and the view to the other side of the Hokianga harbour. This place is like a balm to the psyche.

I mention the bach because it's that time of year when thoughts turn to planning a sanity-saving midwinter holiday. Before we had kids we would just go to the bach with a stack of books.

But for some reason I found myself daydreaming over cheesy South Pacific resorts which have 500 threadcount sheets, luxury up the wazoo and nannies on tap. Fiji was out - in my weekly chat on Newstalk, Susan Wood and Tim Watkin were shocked I even asked whether it was okay to go there.

It's not okay, apparently. Apologies, would-be Fijian nannies; no work for you this year. And then I wondered what I was doing dribbling over Bora Bora anyway. I find resorts creepily Truman Show-ish and I get hot and bothered sitting on the beach trying to disguise my cellulite.

Before we had kids all I did was lie on the sofa at the bach and read the entire PG Wodehouse back catalogue. I'd go for days without washing. If I spend too long up there I do fear I might come back with dreadlocks and a tattoo.

But turning feral was not the problem. The thing is, I've become soft. I didn't care about grimy floors before I had kids. But the middle class culture that sees children as a project - Baby Einstein, amber teething beads, merino blankies and all that fussiness - means I feel like a bad mother if I don't keep my children in the zippidy doodah spit-spot nursery of a modern day Mary Poppins. Or at least try to.

Is my reluctance to "rough it" just me being a drip? Ya think? Maybe everyone has lost their toughness. It could be a side effect of the general smugness and prissiness of our 4WD society.

There has been a lot written about the phenomenon of children being kept in cotton wool, but what about adults with such finely calibrated sensitivities they expect every holiday destination to include a pile of puffy silk cushions?

We need to wise up.

The Atlantic magazine has quoted survivalist Cody Lundin who "tends to think civilisation is a thin film, and in times of economic distress it's smart to be prepared for the day when Safeway runs out of milk".

Lundin knows how to make a fire, eats mice - "a free source of protein in survival scenarios" - and can live without electricity for a week. No silk cushions. Survival is what life is about in most of the world; the "majority world" as the Third World is now known.

As entrepreneur Stephen Jennings told Jane Clifton in the Listener, the people in emerging economies are tougher than us. "They're very much the way we were in the 50s and 60s ... I'm parodying a little bit. But people from developing countries have got a point to prove. They're lean and they're hungry.

That's who we're competing with now." Anyway we're off to the bach for a holiday. Dirty floors are the least of our problems these days.

deborah@coneandco.com