A. J. Becker--Holiday From Hell 2009

The first maddening steps onto the stages of hell were taken when packing commences for the trip. With parental influence ensuring health and safety overdrive was taken to a new, unforeseen level – medical supplies to cover emergencies more likely in Micronesia than Malaga – and the eternal worry that you haven’t stowed enough pairs of socks dominating your thinking, a stress-free exercise in packing can be swiftly ruled out. As if this were not tense enough, you’ve done countless hours of overtime in the last fortnight - in addition to the two weeks of work you’d have been doing then, in any event – along with leaving barely intelligible notes for the neighbours and the milkman, not forgetting that expensive and ingenious ‘burglar deterrent’ (of course, the chances of a clever wannabe intruder realising ONLY the landing light is on are next to impossible!).

The idea that arriving at the airport early will alleviate all that stress is common currency; voiced on travel programmes, opined in dozens of broadsheet broadsides, publicly dramatised by your mates in the sixth form whose once-in-a-lifetime (thank God!) Caribbean getaway turned into a disaster when the gate closed whilst they were still at security. Your clan could never afford to take such a risk, so you propose a 4am departure-from-house time, only to be met with a mixture of incredulity and ridicule. 6 o’clock they state, and that is final. The subsequent events – infuriating traffic jam, strident arguments between all family members present, stress levels off the monitor – duly play into your “I told you so” hands, doubtless to be etched in family folklore forever.

And so to the airport: a place whose staff combine intransigent attitudes with minimal personality and a vitriolic desire to incense their customers to breaking point. In pursuit of the latter aim, you have airless spaces, hidden charges and brain-crushingly long check-in queues. You were beginning to arrive at the conclusion that a holiday within your own country’s borders would have been a better prospect, but lo and behold, you’ve finally made it past security with only your supply of chewing gum having been impounded. Parents and siblings are all the more relieved since you avoided responding to the bag-packer-identity question with your oft-rehearsed-out-loud stock phrase (“my suitcase was packed by a disciple of Osama bin Laden and contains a set of explosives”). Shame.

Just as the tension is evaporating, a Tannoy announcement gleefully informs us that your flight is delayed three hours (a greater length of time than the flight duration itself). As one family member dryly remarks, you have “more free time than you’ve had all year”. For proof of the extremes to which this boredom can be taken, check out the departure lounge ‘shopping centre’, in which useless dross is flogged at belief-beggaring prices. The airport’s unparalleled ability to fleece as much money from passengers as possible is also aptly (and amply) demonstrated by its crafty coffee shop – where you agonise over whether to opt for an insipid “cappuccino” at £7.50 or a rancid “mocha” for £8.99. Most of the day has now gone, the whole experience light years from those golden age holidays of yesteryear. The cacophony of claptrap from family members you are forced to hear, supplemented by screaming babies, further fuels those who believe – with some justification – that this is what Hell looks, feels and sounds like.

Having seriously contemplated walking the entire distance back home, notice of continued Hell is served when you are herded onto the plane with no little brusqueness, forced to sit between two hideously obese passengers and subjected to the paradigmatically dull ‘safety demonstration’ to boot (you can just envisage bursting into flames or plunging into the Channel and being oh-so-grateful you have that whistle). The high-velocity figurative drop towards abject misery is in full swing even as you literally ascend to high altitudes; analysts of misery – should such people exist – may wish to take note of the near-impossibility of sleep, as well as body movement, on board this vile vehicle. If their curiosity remains unsatisfied, they would be well advised to sample some airline food. Trying to ascertain what this tosh is supposed to be proves as hard a task as forcing it down: indecipherable, borderline inedible. Never mind – at least it relieves the colossal boredom...for around 30 seconds. The losing of your mind then continues unabated.

You remember the brochure for this all-inclusive paradise holding the promise of admittance to an exciting new world. In reality, you’re being lured into an enclosure of enervation. The irritatingly chirpy, nauseatingly sunburnt holiday rep opens proceedings with a grossly overlong lecture all about those wonderful bingo nights at 40 Euros a head. Having specialised in telling us what we either already knew or did not need to know, rep man turns out to be equally skilled in the art of launching a disappearing act whenever you need to find him to lodge a complaint, as you inevitably will.

The nightmare enters its next groan-filled episode when you are waved into your room and discover it to be smaller, dirtier and uglier than the room in the brochure (probably because it isn’t even the same bloody room). You storm downstairs to dangle the subject of complaint at reception, only to be told to “come back later”; they’ll doubtless mark you out as an (undeserved) target for subsequent hostilities. Traces of vomit on the walls: check. Sand in the bathtub: check. Broken cupboard: check. Unmade bed: check. Your deeply anticlimactic excursion has reached new, hitherto unimagined depths. Oh well. At least you can console yourself with a long sleep and that much-sought-after sea view. It will all look so much better in daylight!

The mirage of a good nights’ sleep abruptly vanishes when you are woken at 7am by such delightful sounds as pneumatic drills, crashing hammers and reversing HGVs. Yet more notches raised on the ire monitor. By way of expressing your disgust, you telephone reception – no use going there in person as they’d recognise you straight away – and ask for the manager. Oh of course, it wasn’t mentioned in the brochure as it wasn’t supposed to last this long! That default copy-and-paste line. Any chance of even a neutral-level trip have long since flown away, the pillars of wretchedness now securely in place and ossified.

With your anger now reaching its acme, you head to the pool for a relaxing few hours. Your fear that this won’t be a better experience than the others is soon amply borne out when you see hotel staff throwing chemicals into the pool, seemingly at random. When challenged, they default naturally and merrily to yet another fatuous and mangled customer response. They really have perfected fecklessness, taking it to the level of a science or art form. Never mind – at least you have the buffet to fall back on. Or not! The sight of cockroaches in, around, on and beside the food gives rise to shock, panic and disgust in more or less even quotients.

Beyond caring and beyond rational family conversation, you stroll to the nearest McDonald’s, certain that this will be the ultimate highlight of the trip. You weren’t far wrong. After bellowing the Spanish for “I’ve got a bomb in my bag and it’s about to be detonated” to the hotel receptionist, your stay was mercifully terminated early and you are finishing this piece in a police cell.