Blog hijack!

Long goodbyes, 20 minutes' sleep and we’re off. My parents look incredulous at my ability to rise after such little rest,  yet I’m equally as questioning of their getting up at 1am when we aren’t supposed to leave the house for another two and a half hours. I've barely been back in England for five minutes and I’m already back on the road – holiday number three in just five weeks. Not that I’m complaining, as a (hopefully) relaxing trip to one of my favourite places is desperately needed after a fast-paced and exhausting week in the inexhaustible Magaluf.

Stay at home
This has also been the most anticipated holiday. For months. We’ve been fired at with enthusiasm from parents about an unmissable two-day drive down to Portugal that contrasts greatly with their insistence that our attendance is not compulsory if we feel we'd 'rather stay at home'. Regardless, who would choose to remain in England? Firstly, for fear of breaking the hearts of parents who, despite their insistence that 'we understand completely if you don’t want to come' actually really, really want you with them and secondly. the chance to see places so old and so beautiful it would be foolish to miss out.

At 18, the idea of travelling a distance of more than 1,500 miles with parents in a large, although still slightly cramped, car, is often one of horror yet it doesn’t particularly faze me. This may be unusual, yet I see our ability to stand each other (most of the time) as a happy bonus and I pity other families for not having something I hope will stay with us for a very long time. As we travel on the unattractive motorways of the north of France, with Dad pinching his nose, horribly imitating the muffled voice of a pilot and the car filled with the monotonous, yet slightly aggressive instructions of the SatNav as we head into Salamanca, I still can’t help thinking how lucky I am.

Curb your enthusiasm

And so we’re off again on this now much-loved oft-trod escape to the south west of Europe. As we grow more familiar with each schlep (even allowing for the sneaky curveball of some changes to the complicated diversion through Rouen), this trip, two have become six – with four teens aboard, we are outnumbered.

We are taking the slow road to our quick fix of happiness. Two weeks heading towards/staying in/returning from Salema in the western Algarve. We have packed looms and bands, countless magazines, and DVDs of their choosing are piled high in the boot. There’s a boxed up, newly purchased three-man dinghy (complete with oars and pump) atop their four bulging suitcases that hold 19 bikinis between them.

The next generation

We’ve lost the battle over music choice but, to be fair, we never even put up a fight. For this holiday belongs to our next generation, two of them having joined the ranks of adulthood since our last summer all together in the sun. But do they count among the numbers of adults on this holiday? I think not.

When did I last download a ‘Now’ album, I ponder, as I buy boosters to ensure its full delivery to my iPhone. I am appalled to discover this latest release is number 88. ‘What is she singing?’ husband asks, and I hear echoes of my parents. As we all do eventually, I suspect – as these girls will, I hope. In the confines of a Dodge Super Caravan (strangely, no longer feeling overlarge, wide and roomy), we will all dig deep to become tolerant of each other but not of any other travellers – those many strangers who swell in huge numbers in airports this time of year. We have neither the desire or need. We are in our own world of travel and it may not be as fast or cheap as flight but it will be fun.

‘ROAD TRIPS ARE MUCH MORE FUN AND FREE.’ I keep telling the girls this, in a variety of ways and at varying interludes – from when I booked the crossing to just before we leave, when heading out of the EuroTunnel at Calais and as we enter Bordeaux and so on, increasing the frequency and pitch as we nose ever nearer.

‘YOU JUST SEE SO MUCH MORE IN A CAR!’ I screech.
Holidays are often said to make or break a family. I am in danger of either nailing it or putting the final nail in the coffin of whole-family excursions with my high expectations and breathy enthusiasm. And it’s only day one.

War-torn mothering

I am torn. I cannot decide if I was more fretful when our two eldest daughters headed off to Magaluf last Sunday amid headlines of THE sex scandal (insert Daily Mail latest – 'British holidaymakers are avoiding the Mallorca resort of Magaluf following its sex act shame') or whether their return flight home is the more worrying. The latter following the shooting down and destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people on board. The two 18-year-old loves of my life flew the nest, alone but together, for the first time last Sunday. They survived a week in Magaluf (save the stories a teenager should never share with a parent) and they will arrive at Stansted in one piece, too. Safe, tanned and exhausted and with seven days of self-sufficiency under their belt to be built on in the many years to come. I hope. For their travels home do not include the option of a flight path over a war-torn area and security is at red alert for all airlines right now, I imagine. However, my irrational fear of flying can only be accentuated by such a catastrophic tragedy as befell the world this week. I read and reread about every passenger on board. Their DNA and dental records the only forensic evidence left to identify their bodies scattered across the fields of sunflowers.

Comfort blanket
Hours beforehand they were people just like you and me, loved by their families and tweeting comments and posting pictures on Facebook before embarking on the doomed flight. I torment myself with every minute detail, every morsel of information – the politics beyond my comprehension and control, but the true-life backgrounds easy to relate to my own small life. We can all make a connection to the personal stories behind harrowing headlines and heart-breaking images – and I so often err on the realistic ‘why not me?’ rather than the blindingly optimistic ‘this will never happen to me’. The additional storm clouds gathering – with much rain, thunder and lightning – add weight to my over-active imagination and so I turn to transferring thoughts to written words, creating that necessary distraction that is my 'comfort blanket' in times of internal, personal turmoil and panic. I call my mother, 80 last week but still a little fearful of storms as if she were still eight. We talk nonsense in a reassuringly conspiratorial fashion that is the very foundation of such a relationship. Unspoken words of reassurance pass between us, her knowing I am fretful about two daughters flying home from their wild days in Mallorca and my knowing she is uneasy about the storm brewing and the lightning that changes the colour of the skies. It is evident in our jolly tones and happy chatter that we are masking our real thoughts and unfounded fears.

Careful navigation
She need not cover mirrors and hide knives in a superstitious fashion and I have no need to make empty promises to be a better person to nobody in particular in order to have our daughters delivered home safely. Life follows a path, fate takes hold and that careful navigation is as much to do with strokes of luck as it is about wise choices, caution and sensible risk aversion. I am not 18. I am a 48-year-old mother. I adore the fact that I have become a little less 9 to 5 and more footloose, but I do have responsibilities. And forever will. Growing older offers many options. Shedding ridiculous fears and unwarranted worries are sadly not among them. My mother would tell you that.