Not going away is saying more than I first thought!
It seems ‘this not getting away on holiday’ is playing more on my mind than I acknowledged. I was reading the above-linked article in The Guardian which was prompting me back to those summers in which I too was bored.
In religious communities, there is often an annual pilgrimage which acts to take devotees out of their normal daily routines to another place. It doesn’t really matter where the place is it is more about the act of leaving, travelling and returning. Something happens while we are about these tasks.
I can recall summer holidays from the age of 3. The first one was to the Isle of Man.
The following year it was to Butlins in Ayr, Scotland. Then there was a hiatus which signalled my parents’ divorce. I think it was that summer that I first understood boredom during the holidays. Going on holiday at least gave you something to look forward to and when you returned you remained grateful for where you had just been.
Once we adapted to the new life our first holiday was to a caravan in Kilkeel, a coastal town not far from where we lived. Each year from then on it was the Boys’ Brigade, school and the Army Cadet Force that provided me with the means to get away.
The importance was such that I would pay a fiver a week just to get on the trip.
This summer finds me looking back and trying to figure when was the last time I didn’t get away. Other than the one mentioned in my early childhood I believe it was 1986.
That year my hometown was a focus of attention due to a dispute over who could walk on what road. Unionist demanded that they be allowed to complete their annual walk along a road that was now in a Nationalist area. The authorities said no and this triggered off massive protests and civil disorder.
I remember thinking ‘this is it’ and believed it was right that I remain at home that summer. By the following year I exited as my thinking had changed to ‘it is time to move on’.
Even in that, the change of mind was accompanied with a change of place. So if anything I am hearing that as I look back I will see that this year of ‘not going away’ will reflect something of my life at this stage.
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