The Holiday 101.

Because we’ve all been there. Or somewhere. May contain mistakes.

1. Occasionally thinking about your next holiday, knowing that it could be months, if not years, before you actually get another one.
2. Thinking some more about your next holiday, having only just started to forget all the things that went wrong on the last one.
3. Trying to remember what went wrong last time.
4. Vowing not to make the same mistakes.
5. Forgetting all about that a few months later when you actually start to look at holidays.
6. Looking at holidays and trying to find somewhere new that won’t break the bank.
7. Realising that almost every holiday breaks the bank in 2025 because…
8. …it’s not 2003 anymore and you can’t get flights for 99p and…
9. …nice hotels cost a lot and…
10. …cheap hotels are filled with the sorts of people you’d rather try to avoid and…
11. …Air B&B have flooded the market with properties that you either don’t want to stay in or were booked up just after your last birthday.
12. Deciding to just be unadventurous and look at where you went last year.
13. Realise that the time you’ve taken thinking about all this means flights and accommodation have all shot up in price.
14. Or are fully booked until just after your next birthday.
15. And the one after that.
16. Finally finding somewhere that looks quite nice until you realise it is very child friendly.
17. And that the last thing you want to see on a holiday is a child.
18. Finally finding somewhere else that looks quite nice until you realise that when it says it is ‘adults only’ it means adults who are twenty years younger than you and will want to keep you awake all night.
19. And not in a good way.
20. Finally finding somewhere else again that looks quite nice but isn’t quite in your budget range.
21. Eventually accepting that your budget range is too small for a holiday that fits your needs and cautiously extending it whilst making rapid mental calculations about where the rest of the money is going to come from.
22. Booking the hotel, having spent more time on it than you would arranging your own funeral, buying a house or learning Mandarin to a point of fluency that (with a touch of highly inappropriate cosmetic adjustment) would convince your Chinese neighbours you were born and raised in Wuhan province and wouldn’t say no to a bat sandwich.
23. Thinking you’ve done well with your choice, until you start looking at flights.
24. Finding flights that are eye-wateringly pricey, something made even more painful because…
25. …your friend from work just booked very similar flights for a quarter of the price and then got upgraded to business class for free.
26. Apparently.
27. Finding flights that you can deal with price wise but which seem to play with the laws of physics when it comes to the time you can fly, their early morning option suggesting a moment when it is impossible for any other human being on the planet to be awake and happy.
28. Finally finding decent flight times only to realise that you’ll need to depart from Inverness airport.
29. Yesterday.
30. And that the return flight will land in St Ives.
31. Tomorrow.
32. And is with another airline…
33. …whose app doesn’t let you log in when you download it.
34. No, you don’t want to pay extra to secure your seats, but given where you know where you’ll end up if you don’t it probably is worth an extra £30.
35. Yes, you would quite like to bring some luggage on this two week holiday but since it won’t all fit into a case the size of a bar of soap you’ll have it stowed in the hold. Please.
36. And that will cost you slightly more than the price of the actual flight.
37. Which is a fucking joke.
38. No, you don’t want to book a coach transfer from the airport to the hotel as this will take three hours and, bizarrely, cost more than a taxi.
39. No, you really would rather eat shit than order an on-flight bacon sandwich (a sandwich that even a peckish pig would think twice about).
40. Yes, you have heard of travel insurance so why would you, ever, book it through the company that has just drained every penny of your disposable income for the next three months?
41. No, you don’t need to hire a car because that would mean you being the driver for the whole holiday and in that case you may as well just stay at home and be resentful there instead. If you enjoyed driving that much you’d live in Norwich and work in Bournemouth.
42. Oh, it’s all non-refundable this time, is it? Well that’s nice.
43. Finding your left over currency from previous holidays and discovering to your dismay that it adds up to just under twelve Euros…
44. …three million Venezuelan Bolivars…
45. …a fifty centime coin…
46. … and a crumpled bank note with the picture of a recently deceased African dictator on it.
47. Ordering currency when the Great British pound is at an all time low due to a series of catastrophic economic decisions made by three consecutive governments.
48. Ordering more currency but forgetting to take your Nectar card with you and thereby failing to lock in an ‘exclusive’ rate.
49. Getting home, only to remember you had still had some left over currency tucked in your passport after all, which is where you told yourself you were bound to remember it would be eleven months ago.
50. Realising your passport expiry date is just within a year but never quite realising why you can’t travel with it if you only have six months left, because that doesn’t make any logical sense.
51. Having to apply for a new passport (just in case) the day after the price of a new passport went up by another £23 (to help cover the cost of a series of catastrophic economic decisions made by three consecutive governments).
52. Buying a guide book online and having to decide whether to choose the Lonely Planet, Rough Guide or DK version, knowing that each of the three will deliberately contradict each other and in some cases will try to lure you into making a potentially life threatening decision, such as plunge, alone, deep into the slums of drug cartel controlled Juarez to find a “charming, family run coffee shop selling home made pastries and offering charming views of decapitated bodies hanging from a nearby railway bridge”.
53. Going for the Lonely Planet guide only to find it is seven years out of date and was, coincidentally, written by a seasoned backpacker and travel journalist (known to his friends as Tigzy) who was last seen with his head intact entering the slums of Juarez looking for a cup of coffee.
54. In 2019.
55. Having to go to TK Maxx to buy a new suitcase because the last one got fucked by baggage handlers at Gatwick South.
56. Getting out your holiday specific clothes from last and realising you’ve used the same stuff for years.
57. But then, quite reasonably, figuring you may as well give it one more trot round the block because let’s face it – it’ll all get covered in sun cream, sweat and cheap sangria anyway.
58. Buy more sun cream at great cost because the sun cream company say your last one runs out after a year and although you know this is probably bollocks it is also probably not worth the risk of coming home looking like someone from Nagasaki who didn’t find a great place to hide.
59. Spending time deciding between getting a taxi to the airport or paying for either short, mid or long term parking…
60. …knowing all the while that whichever you choose will ultimately be the wrong choice because…
61. …the taxi won’t turn up on time and this will get you stressed…
62. …or the bus from the car park to the terminal will break down and this will get you stressed…
63. …or you didn’t think the return journey through and as you get into the car at 2:30am to drive home you really wished you were sitting in the back of a taxi.
64. Choosing a small collection of high-brow books to read, of which you will complete only one (at a push)…
65. …before giving in and re-reading a Dan Brown on your Kindle and browsing the guide book to learn about all the sights you know you won’t bother going to see.
66. Going to bed later than you should the night before you set off because you can’t sleep, but persuading yourself it’ll be ok in the morning.
67. Which it isn’t, because you’re knackered and grouchy and the last thing that will fix that is three hours in an airport surrounded by other people.
68. No matter how many flights are leaving from however many airline companies yours will be the only one with a queue at the luggage check in desks.
69. People who still don’t know how to scan their boarding pass at security.
70. People who still don’t know to take off their belt at security.
71. People who take very small children on holiday; there really, really should be separate flights just for families with babies and small children.
72. And for the morbidly obese.
73. Another dip into the myth that Duty Free will somehow throw up a bargain. There isn’t a single pair of sunglasses or a single luxury scent or a single bag of M&Ms that you can’t buy cheaper online.
74. But hey, what if you never see them again? And besides, you’re on holiday!
75. And a Mars Bar, packet of crisps and bottle of water ‘combo deal’ should never, ever cost £8.50. Ever.
76. Not even in an airport WHSmith’s.
77. Ordering food in an airport pub or restaurant, knowing full well that it may be overpriced and deeply disappointing but it will be manna from heaven compared with what you’ll get on the plane.
78. Being called to your departure gate when the plane hasn’t arrived yet.
79. Being called to your departure gate when the airline company know very fucking well that your plane is running ‘roughly’ an hour late.
80. Being told at the departure gate any number of reasons why you’ve been sitting there for quite some time with still no plane in sight and trying to sift through the lies to work out what the real reason could be…
81. …before establishing that most airline companies operate on a triangulation of lies, greed and incompetence and that they always will.
82. People who still don’t know how the aircraft seating number on their ticket works…
83. …or do know and just prefer the look of your seat and hope you won’t kick up a fuss.
84. A small can of warm lager and a stumpy tube of Pringles that costs the same as a champagne breakfast for four at The Ritz.
85. Being asked to buy those crappy airline lottery tickets because you clearly haven’t spent enough already.
86. Not buying an airline lottery ticket and the tosser behind you winning twice.
87. With the ticket you would have bought if you hadn’t been so bloody negative about everything.
88. Standing up the moment the seatbelt light goes off and remaining standing for the next 25 minutes because there’s a ‘technical problem’ of some kind or other.
89. Shuffling at glacial speed behind a pair of pensioners all the way to the border control desk…
90. …to have your passport stamped by the most miserable Spaniard in history…
91. …who looks four stone heavier that his ID photo because he now spends his days sitting on an uncomfortable stool stamping passports for arseholes like you…
92. …and those two shuffling pensioners, who will spend the next two weeks baking silently in the sun and come home with upper arms that look and feel like tea-stained scrotums.
93. Going for your first toilet visit in a foreign country since this time last year and realising once more the universal truth that men in airport toilets are incapable of pissing straight.
94. Suddenly realising that everyone but you is splattered and wreathed in galleries of tattoos, not one of which do you envy or covet but leave you thinking: how did it all end up like this?
95. Being driven to the hotel by a driver who seems to think he’s being filmed for a remake of Bullitt.
96. Watching your wad of cash being stealth drained the moment you hit the hotel reception desk: tourist tax, towel hire, safe hire, passport tax, floor tax, water tax, oxygen hire, luxury upgrade package including a flushable toilet, tax tax.
97. The lukewarm flute of sweet fizzy which briefly distracts you from the fact you have spent 175 Euros before you’ve even seen your hotel room.
98. A room that you know, deep down in your heart, will throw up more problems than it solves and even as you unpack everything you have bought with you it occurs to you that within 24 hours you will be packing it all up again to move rooms so you don’t have to hear the late night lobby bingo session they run every other evening for three heavily overweight cretins from Doncaster.
99. Your flight landed late so the bar and restaurant are now closed which means your dinner consists of three bottles of lager, a packet of crisps you’ve never heard of before and half a bar of Milka.
100. And then, finally, you can sit down and try to enjoy your holiday…
101. …until it’s time to go home and start all over again.

G B Burton. 21.07.2025