First World woes of those annoying Summer holidays

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m not sure whether it’s a joy or a sorrow but one of the distractions of sitting in front of a computer screen for most of the day is that there will always be the occasional minute-or-two journey into matters not directly concerned with the construction of the next newspaper story.

It’s probably a necessary little break from the tedium of the daily grind and on occasion such ‘virtual trips’ stoke the coals of the imagination and provide us with little insights into the world around us.

Anyway, on one of those little recent excursions, I came across a full-blown article from the Mayo Clinic website on what is considered to be one of the major times of stress for individuals and families.

Admittedly, it is a first world problem – namely that of people getting completely stressed out, at the planning and execution of their holidays or ‘annual vacation’ as the Americans might put it.

Everything of course is relative in this world and if you’re living in places like Syria, Haiti or Ethiopia, the Mayo Clinic tips for avoiding holiday stress won’t be featuring on your reading list anytime shortly.

Being a child of the sixties in rural Galway, holidays never featured on the agenda. And what we knew nothing about, we didn’t miss, although the jingle from a sponsored holiday programme on Radio One, has never really been cleared out from a tiny cavern of my mind.

“We’re all going on a Summer holiday, no more working for a week or two . . .” was, as I discovered in later life, a big hit for one Cliff Richard, and it was as close to a vacation as myself, or indeed anyone else along the road, would come to.

The best part of 30 Summers had passed before eventually the fateful day arrived when a sun holiday eventually happened, loaded with expectations of the happiness that would descend upon me from doing absolutely nothing under the sun for the best part of a fortnight.

My browsing through the Mayo Clinic guidelines on holiday stress jolted the memory buds of the absolute and stifling boredom . . . nay, even mild depression . . . that I began to endure after just two days of having nothing to do but lie under the baking Mediterranean sun.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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