Improper Instructions - taking a holiday from a holiday

A how-to guide of what to do when you get back from the airport

Okay so you have returned from holiday; you are exhausted - two weeks away from creature comforts? It was supposed to be a well-regarded hotel, but clearly the cut price deal you got was the smelly, squat cupboard they keep free for overbooking emergencies. Just accept that holidays take so much more out of us - and let me be the soothing ointment to your crackling sunburn.

Slap that bag on the floor

Your luggage has a new home now. It doesn’t need to be hoisted back into position on top of the wardrobe - in fact, the worst thing you can do right now is unpack and put it away. For one thing it’s extra work and you still have 12 hours left on a day listed in your Google calander as ‘Ruddy Holiday’. Technically speaking you’re still off the clock and emotionally, until it’s unpacked you are not home - you are merely staying in a very familiar Airbnb with council tax obligations. Keep that dream alive. No - what you need to do is live out of that suitcase until it is empty, and maybe even re-use it as an improvised laundry basket right up until it becomes problematic. For now, you are still a nomad merely resting their head at the latest stop.

Ignore the smell in the fridge

Returning home, the nostrils are the first thing that welcome you back. No longer is the air singed clean by the rays of the beating sun. Back in Blighty (or ‘Flighty’ if you call somewhere foreign home) the fragrances around you are familiar. Every smell, no matter how horrid, is a memory of a life you left behind just two weeks ago. Therefore, don’t linger on any given smell - for one thing it could be that dead-rat-smell you always fear when returning home (there’d be more flies but it’s still a possibility), but for another you should keep those nostrils closed for fear of lapsing into your previous life. Why not pop a clothes peg on your nozzle and pretend it is a strange local custom you aren’t quite au fait with yet?

Don’t check your emails

Work can wait. They can send you whatever they like, you have no responsibility to have checked in on any emails no matter how many times the word ‘urgent’ appears in the subject. Perhaps it would have been better to tell work you weren’t going to be there this week with a bit more warning than in the video call while you were at the airport, but that is simply professional courtesy and not a legal obligation - and frankly part of the fun of it all. At the very least, create a filter to automatically mark any of those HR e-mails as unread, it’ll all be worked out once you get back in and explain you had a family emergency. You just need a family emergency that sounds believable and doesn’t involve clubbing in Malaga, or wherever it was you were.

Don’t dwell on your failure

Assimilating with the locals was never going to be easy. It’s exhausting having to be “on” all the time while everyone else speaks a different language around you. Despite pledging to at least be mildly conversational, avoiding questions by saying “sorry” in a dodgy accent wasn’t quite what you had in mind when you kickstarted that duolingo binge three weeks before you left.

But don’t be down on yourself - you tried, and that’s half the battle. The back-home people don’t have to know any better - they’ll be so impressed if you just chuck in a few words you heard the locals shout at you. Besides, 80% of the time you ate a meal that closely matched one that you had attempted to order - if Michael Owen’s shots on target were that good, they’d have made a golden statue of him by now.

…Focus instead on your success

Remember when one of the barman remarked that he thought you were one of the locals? Admittedly he said this in perfectly structured English, which is why you even understood it in the first place, but it’s easier for them isn’t it? They just have to watch Friends and they absorb it by osmosis. There’s nothing of cultural value going the other way, other than a bit of raunchy material which you’ve always appreciated for being under-scripted.

You need to give yourself a stern look in the mirror and say something in a language you do understand and re-align those chakras. Yes, you can have a beer and one portion of chips. You do have two siblings actually, and one has brown hair and the other also has brown hair. You don’t even need to ask for directions to the library disco - you’re home again. You own this town and everything the light touches.

Eat Something. Anything

You’re ravenous. That thing you have to do with your tongue to make that rolling sound was exhausting for the soul, all that local street food was exhausting on the buttocks too. You must replenish, but clearly now is not the time to venture outside again to a shop - anything even remotely domestic has to be deferred. Similarly, you are now even more skint than when you booked your holiday on Pay Later, so a delivery is out of the question.

Past-you was at least careful to empty your fridge of fresh food before you left - but to think those salad tomatoes would survive was uncharacteristically ambitious. To present-day-you, its clear that they need to be expunged, not consumed. For the necessary calories you need now, you have every right to dig into the bounty you brought home with you. Yes, they were supposed to be gifts, but they were panic buys anyway. It never made sense that someone you barely see anymore would truly appreciate an oversized Toblerone from Gatwick airport, so hide that shame and get them down you - and destroy the evidence.

That’s when you found the gift from Eduardo - maybe leave that unopened for now.

Update the Diary

You will forget everything unless you do this. The first thing you do when you get in through the door, take a moment to remind yourself of it all. Holidays are like dreams - if you don’t write them down, their memory fades into the mind.. like a bag of dust thrown onto the beach.

Write everything you can while you can still feel it hum - the restaurants, the beaches, the names of people you tried desperately to remember. Walk yourself from tourist shop to tat mart, and make some effort to remember what you did and where - even if it is only the vague recollection of some cocktails you ordered for breakfast, or the bacon sarnie you washed down with a midnight pint. If you don’t remember how relaxed you felt, you will simply feel like you have wasted those weeks and have nothing to show for it. Dig deep. Look in that bag of souvenirs like you’ve just come out of a coma and been handed your past by a concerned family member whose name you can’t quite recall.

Reminisce about that lad you shagged

Digging through the plastic bag with the logo of some foreign supermarket on the side, you find another item that reminds you of Eduardo. He was gorgeous wasn’t he? Such an innocent face, beautiful blonde hair. So gentle, so sweet. It was a real joy to be seduced by him, and you mean that in the purely logistically erotic way. All business and no swimming shorts. Thank god they use metric over there, because if you had had to converse in metric there’s no way you’d have entertained that size of gent.

Did he want more than just a fling? It felt very casual if he did, but he was very forthcoming on el WhatsAppio. It’s nice to have that direct line to someone’s heart. Did anyone see you together though? That’s the more pertinent question. Its one thing to have a summer romance, these things come and go like the tides - but quite another to have your life-long but as yet unexplored blossoming sexuality exposed for all to see. Did anyone share any pictures with him in? Would be nice to see his face again.

Give ChatGPT a high five

That was a job well done. About 90% of the recommendations were real. It was slightly disappointing to roll up to what you thought would be a fascinating museum suited to your exact hobby and interests, only to discover it was a crack den - but it will make for an excellent anecdote for years to come. And yes, all the dietary requirements had to be ignored despite the list of places to eat being handpicked because of how good they were supposed to be with these things. And did you get threatened for trying to talk about “a mosquito on your bottom”? I don’t think that was the AI’s fault, just a misunderstanding. Was helpful to to have a robot mate to talk you through those meaningful life decisions. And there’s no denying it found you that excellent ‘off the beaten track’ moment where you really lived for what felt like the first time ever - and managed to get you to the airport swiftly, and away from prying eyes!

Remind yourself of the pure joy you had just digging a hole on the beach

Nothing says “I am having a relaxing time” like lying on your back in some sand and looking up at the sun with your nose in a good book. Except, now that you think about it, you don’t really enjoy reading. You were many Sambucas deep. And the tide was in. And the moon was out. And you weren’t lying on a towel on the beach, but frantically digging on your knees while the waves got higher and higher. They weren’t lapping on your toes delightfully, it was actually quite stressful, felt a bit pressured… oh god! You’ve just remembered why you were digging that hole. You had to hide something. Something quite big. Eduardo. No, it wasn’t your fault. Oh wait maybe it was.

Shit.

Google how to push down your feelings of guilt for murdering someone on holiday

Do be careful to use a burner account for this, as they do attach your search history to whichever account does the searching, and this is classic fodder for getting you tied up in a bigger scandal than it is. This will all blow over anyway - a guy you were shagging died. That’s all. It’s sad but it happens. Probably.

You barely knew him really. You weren’t there when he died and even if you were, it was probably his fault for snorting something he shouldn’t. You were just pals, nothing romantic - you aren’t even into guys. Maybe search for other things so that gets lost. Elton John? Hmm… autocomplete is offering you “how to hide a body while on holiday that you were definitely responsible for strangling”, “can you get a refund if you are extradited while on a package holiday” and “internalised homophobia sign of ADHD?” Really if you think about it, you thought you were just playing a game where you covered each other in sand and tried to dig yourselves out, he just never reciprocated and lost on the first round, due to the fact that he couldn’t breath. Because you stroked his neck a bit too tightly for a bit too close to twenty minutes. Sambuca is a hell of a drug.

Hmm… looks like you also already googled how to say ‘no comment’ in Greek. Was that what they spoke there?

Destroy The Diary

Now that you’re starting to remember, that diary has become a bit of a liability. Maybe burn it? Oh bugger, no fireplace… thank you Maggie Thatcher. Get a lighter? Burn it in a pan? Don’t even own a lighter any more - its all vapes… you can’t catch an ember off a cotton-candy flavoured disposable. Birthday candles? They must be somewhere? You look in the suitcase. A lot more blood on those jeans than you first thought - probably should have gone into the dirty section then…

Sirens now. Maybe you could soak the diary in a bucket of bleach water. Shitting hell you’ve got a white patch on your nice new summer shorts now. Is that blood still on your wrists? Did you even remember to clean him for DNA? Did listening to all those hours True Crime podcasts amount to nothing?

Knock knock knock. It’s quite a forceful knock, a bit like they are using a tree trunk to get your attention. Could just be Evri? Door has fallen now, and there’s some quite stern men coming in to have a chat.

“Sorry lads I’m still on annual leave, can you come back tomorrow” you start to mumble but they are quite keen for you to put your hands in the air and to very quietly get down onto your knees.

Well, at least you won’t have to go back to work I suppose.