It’s that time again: the holiday. Or a holiday, I should say. I hesitate to make it sound more momentous than it is. Holidays for me have never been great set-piece events, carefully rationed out in annual quotas, as they are for most respectable people. I’ve always taken the view that if an opportunity for a few days away presents itself, it should be grabbed — like a reduced pork pie on a supermarket counter. That said, my partner Brayden has a proper job. You know, emails, policies, and somebody called Deborah in HR who approves his holiday requests. So we can’t just swan off as and when. We have to pick our moment, like a vicar choosing his text. This year, aside from a quick week in New York which barely counts — more an exercise in walking and ordering coffee wrong — we’ve not been away. So we’re off next Saturday. Madeira. Now, Madeira — if I’m being honest — has always existed for me primarily as a punchline in Up Pompeii — that wonderful seventies sitcom where Frankie Hower...
Fear No More the Heat of the Sun (Cymbeline Act IV sc2) Living on a boat, as we do, you become rather more aware of the weather than your average house-dweller. They check an app and think “Showers. I’ll wear my cagoule.” We, meanwhile, live it. We hear it. We occasionally have to mop it up with an old towel and a resigned expression. In winter, we go full cosy. There’s the reliable hum of central heating, the cheer of a decent wood-burner, and the comforting percussion of rain on a cambered roof. It’s like living inside one of those nostalgic Channel 5 Christmas films—only without the snow budget or the Canadian actors pretending to be British. There’s a smugness in being warm when the world outside looks like a scene from Chernobyl: The Musical. But come spring, we begin to crave the change. A proper sunny day—deck doors open, light pouring in, shirtsleeves and sunglasses at 6pm—feels like reward for good behaviour. Recently, we’ve had a string of such days. The kind of late s...
We’ve just returned from holiday. And if you asked whether I’d go away again tomorrow, I’d say yes—not for sun or sea or spiritual replenishment, but because I’d need another holiday to recover from the one just gone. Not the destination. Madeira was, in a word, sublime. Mountains above clouds, sunsets like oil paintings, a sort of dignified warmth that didn’t singe the scalp. Even the famous wicker toboggan ride—lunacy in a linen hat—was delightful. No, the trouble wasn’t the island. It was the journey. And by “the journey,” I mean British Airways. Though if we’re being honest, British Airways has become more of a concept than a company—a sort of floating rumour of service with the occasional aircraft attached. We stayed overnight at Gatwick. Business class—our little indulgence. Not for the champagne, but in the faint hope someone might actually answer a question. At 6.25pm we arrived, to find a queue that could only be described as biblical. If Moses had parted these people, he’d...
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