That’s some admission, huh? But it’s true. I have no fucken idea how to holiday because I’m just not wired like other people. I do not think I have even ever had a holiday in the terms most people understand, apart from when I was a child, and my parents took me somewhere and declared we were “on holiday”.
Please understand I do not view trips locally or overseas as holidays. They are trips. You are travelling. You are not relaxing. Spend five hours at Dubai airport on your way to Munich and tell me it’s relaxing.
The word “holiday”, if you didn’t know, is a thinly disguised variant of “holy day” from the Old English “haligdæg”. It’s a day when you were forced to take a break from struggling to survive in the Dark Ages, to venerate and give thanks to an imaginary deity for not yet pitching you into a vat of fire, slaughtering your family, enslaving your village, and be-fucking your miserable serf-life far more than it was already be-fucked by simply living in the Dark Ages.
Us modern idiots regard a holiday as a break or a rest from work, where one is meant to relax and recharge.
And that, right the fuck there, is the problem I have.
I am a man, and the concept of “relax” is alien to my genetic programming. If a man relaxes, terrifying shit may happen to him, catch him unawares and unprepared, and gang-fuck his life. You drop your guard, you die. Or bad things happen to you and you might as well die because you have failed as a man, and there’s simply no point in going on.
The same can be said for this “recharge” bullshit. I am not a fucking Tesla. I spend two weeks relaxing (whatever the fuck that is), and I am not recharged. I am soft, and dopey, and ripe for slaughter.
I think this state of being has much to do with my innate wogness. You ever seen wog men on holidays? None of them are lying down sunbaking. The fuckers sunbaking on Adriatic beaches are all Poms. Male wogs are always doing something, or in a state of readiness to do something, if and when something needs doing.
I never saw my father lay down on a towel. He would spend his entire “holidays” sitting on a chair or a folding canvas stool, standing, walking, and always, ALWAYS, looking around, always aware, and always…well, “on”, I guess.
I feel that’s where I might have gotten this inability to holiday from. This is exactly the kind of primeval shit that’s passed down the male line – you’re a man and you have no fucken business lollygagging, daydreaming, or lounging around like some fetid, overfed eunuch. Stay on your game, or lose the fucking game.
All of this came as quite a surprise to my beloved wife, Lynette, when she took me on “holidays” to Nambucca Heads the other week.
“How did she not know about my inability to holiday?” you ask. Simple. We have never had such a thing. Seriously. We have gone away, we have gone on trips both bike and car, but in almost four decades of marriage, we have not once had a holiday where we did nothing but lay around and relax.
My wife, however, does know how to relax. She meditates and shit. It’s quite amazing to see. I meditate too. But I meditate about how awesome it would be to cut the face off an enemy with a cruel blade and spit into the wounds, and I meditate on carving superb corners on some wondrous bike. None of my meditations are associated with relaxation.
I do not know what relaxation is.
And then suddenly, here I was in Nambucca Heads, on a beach in a pair of shorts, with a towel over my shoulder, and expectations roiling around me.
My wife buttered herself in sunblock, spread her towel, and lay down upon it. After a few minutes she looked up at me.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing, why?” I replied.
“Why are you standing there? Lay down. Relax.”
“What? Here? On the sand? Are you out of your mind? I’m not laying down here. Or anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a whole bunch of reasons. Firstly, I do not like lying down in public. If I lie down in public, something may happen, and I’m no longer of an age where I can simply leap to my feet and deal with it. Secondly, I can’t see anything from down there. I can’t see the car and I can’t see an approaching threat.”
“Why do you need to see the car?” she asked. “Will you forget what it looks like?”
“Very funny. What if someone tried to break into it? That shit happens all the time. There are scumbags everywhere. Even here. Just look at the rancid crim graffiti all over the rocks.”
“That’s the V Wall. People have painted their names on the rocks. Some of them are memorials.”
“And most of them are just bogan knob-lords commemorating some piss-fest they’ve had. Fucken place looks like a Crip-tagged LA overpass.”
“So, you’re going to just stand there for three days?”
“No. I will sit. On that rock over there. Now and again, I will swim, because the sea cleanses me and I am a strong and able swimmer, but mostly I will sit on that rock and guard you.”
“Guard me from what?”
“From whatever horrors may decide to assail you. Are you not listening? There are fucken monsters in this world! I am all that stands between them and you.”
“Oh my God, are you listening to yourself?”
“Always. I always listen to myself. And myself is telling me to sit here on this rock and keep watch.”
And that is exactly what I did for three days. As a result, my wife got the chance to relax. It was amazing to see. She very much needed to get away for a bit. She enjoyed our holiday very much.
So did I. I had a great time. I sat on my rock and watched everything. I swam in the sea. A lot. The sea is a wonderful thing. I ate prawns and drank beer. These are also wonderful things, and in concert with the sea, and some rock-sitting, shit becomes transcendental. I laughed. I was convivial, and friendly, and easy to get along with, so my wife was pleased. And I got to catch up with my brother Deano and his wife, Jane, which I really need to do more often.
But I did not relax. Fuck that.
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