Frazzled before we go

Oh, it's so exhausting.

And for what? Two weeks which mess up your daily routine; drag you out of your 50-weeks-a-year rut; entice you into enforced laziness; and all to finish up with a rounder waistline and peeling skin.

Yes, folks, we have been planning our annual Get Away From It All. Things have been fraught, so many decisions to make.

By the time you get to your island paradise, you are so frazzled you are barking at Jose, Manuel or Chico for your first Pina Colada.

Then it takes so many days to unwind, the holiday is over before you have managed a lie-in or shed the feeling of guilt that you are not in the office doing something useful. Why do we bother?

My dictionary says a holiday is "a period in which a break is taken from work or studies for rest, travel or recreation."

Do the compilers of that dictionary know just how much hard work goes into arranging a vacation?

Of course they don't. They only refresh that dictionary every five years or so, and then it's only to add a few new words like chav, bling or Delia. Their life is a perpetual holiday.

Robert Louis Stevenson said something like it is far better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Which suggests that even he was worried about engine failure at 39,000-feet somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. And if he did not mean that, he was probably saying that the flight -two-hour check-in, three-hour delays, strip search through security, turbulence and microwaved plastic meals - was the best part of the holiday.

Because when you arrive at your self-catering, sea-view villa with pool you find a cockroach-infested slum with one electric cooking ring which is three miles to the sea and has a swamp on the doorstep.

Over the years I've learned how to take some of the pain out of holidays. My wife spends hours scouring the Internet - in work's time - finds a likely bargain and emails me with a brief summary. "Book it, then" I reply. That way it comes off her credit card and there's only her to blame if things go wrong.

She likes to take control, so she looks after all the insurance, travel documents and parking arrangements and sees us through the airport, onto the plane and deals with security when they find I have a Swiss Army pen knife in my pocket.

That's why I never know where we are headed, what currency we will need and I can never remember where we have stayed weeks after we got back home.

At least we are both agreed, holidays are for mindless recreation. There's no abseiling, wind-surfing, mountain-trekking exertion for us. It's a beach, sunbed and lazy evenings. If there's a dusky maiden to rub on the sun oil, so much the better. At a pinch, my ever-loving will even turn the pages of my book by the side of the pool.

But it's the run-up to holidays that demand the effort, especially if you are going somewhere exotic while we are still trapped in icy winter. Have you ever tried to buy summer holiday clothes in Britain in January? Swimming costumes are fur-lined and none of the sun creams are on special offer.

Thankfully, you can buy sunglasses all year round because there are always weird males who wear them dusk to dawn, or women drivers of BMWs who have them perched on their heads no matter what the weather.

If you are worried about burglars, you get in house sitters. But the place has to be cleaned head to toe so the sitters don't think you live like animals. And if you have pets, you have to arrange their accommodation. I have one friend who doubles the cost of every holiday by putting her cats into a five-star luxury pet hotel.

So, you get on holiday and start to relax. Which means, if you are anything like me with the willpower of a gnat's big toe, you over-eat, over-drink and over-expose yourself to the sun's rays.

Then it's back to work feeling jaded, needing a rest and with skin like antique leather - and after the hundredth person says "did you have a good holiday?", you want to scream.

By the way, do you lose all your deposit if you cancel early?

Updated: 10:49 Tuesday, February 08, 2005