It's holiday time and while some people will be taking a road trip, Wyn Drabble is looking forward to relaxing at home. Photo / File
It's holiday time and while some people will be taking a road trip, Wyn Drabble is looking forward to relaxing at home. Photo / File
OPINION:
"The same old streets look different now, more distinct, as through new glasses."
I thought of these Roger McGough words as I was driving to collect the mail (bills and hard copy spam) from our post office box on what was the first day of my summer holidays.
Idon't know whether you also experience what I'm about to describe. If you do, you'll understand. If you don't … I'll leave that sentence unfinished.
You drive the same old streets every day, you see the same old things, the same people (tasteful omission of "old" there). Only the weather provides a changing background. You take it all in, of course, but, just maybe, you don't fully appreciate it.
Then suddenly you're on holiday, the burden of work is lifted from your shoulders and you drive through the same old streets. They look different now, more distinct, as through new glasses.
"And the sky, was it ever so blue?"
Yes, with the burdens of work removed, everything looks … well … crisper. The pixels pop. Even the people look sprightlier and more dimensional. There is almost a glow.
I need to point out that my use and repetition of the word burden might suggest I don't like my work. I do. Very much. Why else would I keep doing it at these advanced years?
But it still makes demands of you and you really realise that when the demands are lifted. That's when the same old streets become crisper and clearer and an inner voice is chanting, "I'm on holiday".
Wyn Drabble
No time pressures. No morning alarms. No deadlines.
You become so relaxed that even a tiny task like putting a new battery in the fire alarm (because it shrilly squawked its reminder) can take days to get around to.
Well, you need to get out the ladder and remove the new battery from its fortress plastic packaging. These things take time.
For hanging a picture you should probably set aside at least a week. A fortnight if it's a really big picture.
And mowing the lawn can surely wait. Besides, the dog enjoys luxuriating in its length on warm days so why remove that pleasure from an innocent canine?
The maxim to live by is, "Yesterday I did nothing and today I'm finishing it." There is certainly truth in the adage that, if you want a job done well, give it to a busy person.
Sometimes, home is a rewarding place to spend a holiday. Overseas is out anyway and there's no shame in saying that you stayed home for your holidays. Besides, the prices are very reasonable.
One downside is that if you holiday at home you can't look forward to getting back home. No matter how exotic the holiday spot, I always look forward to arriving back home (I'm a Cancer). You can't do that if you're already there.
But blobbing out cannot become permanent. Soon the need for job satisfaction, the need for a true purpose, will return. You'll head back to the workplace, positive and recharged.
Of course, my opening words come from the McGough poem, My Busconductor, in which the context is rather different. The conductor is not on holiday but is near death because he only has one kidney and that will soon go "on strike" and he will have to "clock off". That is why he is seeing everything more clearly, why he is savouring his surroundings.
I only hope that the fact that those lines popped into my head is not some sort of portent. No, it couldn't be, not when everything is so "distinct, as through new glasses".
