I remember starting the school year and at some point having to write about what we had done in the summer break. While my middle class associates could ramble on about their adventures in foreign climes or some of their more mundane but still alien weeks away in holiday camps or visits to distant relatives, I was stuck with having to describe how I had frittered away my time working in the orchards or on the farm, or just aimlessly wandering in the country lanes. I don't think I felt any jealousy as I was unaware of what I was missing. In those days, holidays were for the wealthy, package holidays were unheard of and flying was very expensive.
Holidays are strange phenomena and of course are a vital part of the economy of most countries. Some nations are totally dependent upon the tourist trade and would struggle to survive without all that foreign money that pours in. Airlines are very dependent upon the holiday trade and the numbers of planes in the air is growing exponentially. One day the real damage done to the atmosphere will become clear.
I must admit that there was a time when I yearned for a holiday, and I am sure that anyone in a full time job will long to get away for a while just to break up the monotony and to take a rest. I am on holiday all of the time and so the holiday as such has become less appealing.
Now foreign trips are within the grasp of most people in the west, and at this time of the year, millions put themselves deeper in debt for a couple of weeks in the sun, and for what? Hours waiting in airports and then being shoehorned into cramped metal tubes. Thrust together in accommodation less comfortable than they have at home, eating unhealthy food, getting sunburned on crowded beaches filled with fellow Brits, then coming home to find the house burgled and the car battery flat.
There is a growing human tendency to want everything and want it now. This includes being somewhere where you are not. Bombarded by the media, subliminal messages tell us that we need to get away and so like sheep we go along with it, joining the rest of the flock heading for temporary pastures new, and what do we do when we get there? Much the same as we do at home. We take our laptops, our kindles or our paperbacks and we sit around reading or watching movies or browsing the web. We fill our digital cameras or phones with records of where we have been but not really experienced because we were so busy taking photographs that will sit in the camera, forgotten for weeks and then uploaded to the computer to join the thousands of images already there.
For kids going back to school, their task has been much simplified; "What we did on our holidays" has become, like much of what they do in school, a cut and paste, fully illustrated journal of events.
Holidays are strange phenomena and of course are a vital part of the economy of most countries. Some nations are totally dependent upon the tourist trade and would struggle to survive without all that foreign money that pours in. Airlines are very dependent upon the holiday trade and the numbers of planes in the air is growing exponentially. One day the real damage done to the atmosphere will become clear.
I must admit that there was a time when I yearned for a holiday, and I am sure that anyone in a full time job will long to get away for a while just to break up the monotony and to take a rest. I am on holiday all of the time and so the holiday as such has become less appealing.
Now foreign trips are within the grasp of most people in the west, and at this time of the year, millions put themselves deeper in debt for a couple of weeks in the sun, and for what? Hours waiting in airports and then being shoehorned into cramped metal tubes. Thrust together in accommodation less comfortable than they have at home, eating unhealthy food, getting sunburned on crowded beaches filled with fellow Brits, then coming home to find the house burgled and the car battery flat.
There is a growing human tendency to want everything and want it now. This includes being somewhere where you are not. Bombarded by the media, subliminal messages tell us that we need to get away and so like sheep we go along with it, joining the rest of the flock heading for temporary pastures new, and what do we do when we get there? Much the same as we do at home. We take our laptops, our kindles or our paperbacks and we sit around reading or watching movies or browsing the web. We fill our digital cameras or phones with records of where we have been but not really experienced because we were so busy taking photographs that will sit in the camera, forgotten for weeks and then uploaded to the computer to join the thousands of images already there.
For kids going back to school, their task has been much simplified; "What we did on our holidays" has become, like much of what they do in school, a cut and paste, fully illustrated journal of events.
