You wake to sun streaming through the window, not to your phone vibrating on the bedside table. Breakfast alfresco doesn’t mean a latte and muffin on the platform worrying if your train is late. You are on holiday and life is good. Why can’t real life be more like this, you wonder. Maybe if I buy a tablecloth like the one in the local taverna, my tomato salad will taste as it does in Spain? Perhaps I could upholster the sofa in deckchair stripes?
The urge to bring the holiday spirit home via the gift shop runs deep. One summer it is the school holidays and you are stuffing the little pockets of your shorts with shells and pebbles, the next thing you know you are buying a lighter in the shape of a matador for your student flat, and soon you’re all grown up and struggling home with a vintage garden parasol and a shell-decorated mirror.
