Holiday Truths – Half-Way Syndrome

I want to tell you the story of another one of those holiday truths, one that will be all too familiar to many readers – and how I finally beat it..

“dream days lived in another place”

As children, we always went away for one week, to Wales.  This meant a day’s travelling at either end, on a Saturday, and six full days of pure enjoyment!  Unless it rained..  The thing about that six days was this – it was never six days as

Holiday Truths - Time Flies, courtesy of flickr.com user: dumbledad

far as we children were concerned.  It was always two blocks of three days.  The first  three days – well – these were dream days lived in another place with not a moment’s thought about the passing of time.  But the second block of three days?  Well, this is when one of the most inescapable of holiday truths came to the fore – the half-way syndrome.

“when we’re back to normal”

As soon as we reached the evening meal on day three, the dimension of time, so thankfully absent for the first half of the holiday, would return with a vengeance.  Suddenly, all talk, every conversation, involved time.  “Well, we’re half way through the holiday now”, Dad would say.  That would start us all off.  From that moment it seemed as if every conversation started with, “When I get back I must remember to…”, or “Next week, when we’re back to normal…”  Struggle as we might, none of us could completely escape the clutches of time.

Now, as an adult, my travel arrangements are more varied.  Sometimes it’s a still week; sometimes two; sometimes a few days.  The thing is, even when I am away for two weeks, I still find myself doing that childhood thing of splitting the time in two and thinking to myself, from the end of the first week, “oh well, more than half of the holiday has gone now..”.  Then, if I’m not very careful indeed, rather than just three days being blighted, I will find that a whole week of the fortnight is affected.  As holiday truths go, this one is a killer, and I urge you to fight it – stop yourself immediately when you find yourself saying inwardly “more than half way now..”

“the other ‘arf was struggling”

Then came the Corfu incident.  It was a momentous occasion, the Corfu incident.  When this happened some five years ago, I managed to confuse my subconsciousness to the extent that I have never since suffered from the half-way syndrome and from that time onwards I have had one fewer holiday truths to cope with..

We went to Corfu for a week.  I had just finished a job and not started another one, and the other ‘arf was struggling on with a much-hated job at the time.  Well, we got to day six of our week’s holiday, and we were having a great time apart from the occasional bout of the dreaded half-way syndrome of course, which had been bothering me now and then since the end of day three as usual.  We were about to go to the beach on day six, for our final full day of  sun, and I said, in a carefully-phrased impersonal question, “I wonder how much it would cost someone to stay another week here?”

“one computer in the whole resort”

Well, that was enough of a bombshell to propel us on impulse to the nearest internet terminal (there was just ONE computer in the whole resort, in a bar on a camp site), and 90 very productive minutes later we had booked a different flight, given up the UK job in the case of my partner, and it was all systems go for a blissfully happy, totally unplanned second week’s holiday.

I spent this entire bonus second week in a state of near ecstasy, revelling in the unexpected bliss of a sudden, impulsive, extra week in the sun in Corfu.  We felt like such rebels, like naughty school children.  It was a fantastic way to banish the “half-way syndrome”, that most nagging of holiday truths, for good.