So, I asked my friend on her return. How was it? The trip had been long-awaited, long-planned, long-saved for. It was the first time she and her partner had really travelled together. A lot was at stake. A fibber might have glossed over the inevitable shitty moments, but that's not why she's my friend. Well, she said, it was mostly wonderful, however there were a few times it was truly terrible. And she told me a tale so agonising I could but laugh. New Year's Eve, Barcelona, a few days into their travels; they had spent the day traipsing from museum to museum, tracking down the work of her partner's favourite 17th century Spanish artist. They had left it too late to get into any of the excellent restaurants she had researched. Overwhelmed by hunger and exhaustion, niggles turned nasty and as midnight struck and fireworks lit up the night sky, there they sat, backs turned to each other, the tears coursing down her cheeks, swollen and silent.
It was a few years ago, that miserable scene, but I thought of it when I found myself away from home recently, gorging on my own despair. After a particularly social summer I had thirsted for some time alone with my husband and children. Wending our way south for a family reunion we had decided to kick off the trip with one slap-up night in a hotel, and when we picked the kids up from school at lunchtime everything felt sugared with promise. Work was not going well for my husband that day though, and we kept having to push pause on our excitement as he took yet another terse phone call. Oh, we still visited the cool adventure playground, still checked out the shops, but the kids and I were only playing tourist while he paced along the edges of our joy. It was dinner by the time his phone grew quiet; finally, I thought: finally the family holiday can begin. Except that no one could decide where to eat. The cafe that delivered your food by pneumatic tube? The heritage bar at which you could watch the world go by? Both, we settled on. A progressive meal. However by the time we had done one, and navigated our way to the other, someone had a blister, someone was whingeing about the noise, and, in a sudden act of petulance I would not have believed him capable of, my husband stormed off. Much later, crying into the lonely bath I had drawn myself in that luxurious hotel bathroom, contemplating whether or not to bunk down with the kids, I thought about how it had all gone so awfully wrong.
The trouble, I think, boils down to expectation. When your surrounds are breathtaking, when you're meant to be having the time of your life, arguments are rendered so much worse. If you'd fought at home you could have banged around the kitchen, slammed a few doors, put some headphones on and fallen asleep watching back-to-back episodes of Ozark. But travel, in and of itself, can be stressful and, annoyingly, even though you're on holiday, the same old crap that brings you down in your day-to-day life, is still prone to rear its beastly head. On a 13-hour round bus trip to see Milford Sound even the majesty of those waterfalls couldn't dwarf my husband's sore throat or my PMS. And because you know you're spoiling this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that everything is going to be ruined, you try to make up before you actually want to, which, of course, is when everything really explodes because it's too soon, too raw, and you're not really ready to forgive and forget. You're only saying sorry because that damned view's so bloody beautiful and it's cost you a frickin' arm and a leg to see it.
Following on
