I want to take my family on a holiday somewhere warm, where I don’t have to worry about transport or what to eat or think at all. I want a designated time and place for relaxation. I want to declare my independence at check-in and be carried away slowly on a conveyer belt, draped in a sarong. I would like to be pampered to death on a luxury cruise like David Foster Wallace in his story A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. I’m tired enough that the existential despair would be lost on me. Five to seven days of fresh towels and organised fun sounds like paradise.
My last proper holiday with my partner, Sam, was in 2015, pre-kids. We bicycled through Mexico City and ate pig’s head soup at tiny stalls on street corners. We stayed in a hotel where you could smoke in the elevator and the pool had a 10-metre unsupervised diving board. We finished the trip in a hut on the cliffs of Mazunte, where we slept for eight days in bed, on beaches and in hammocks; waking for mid-morning micheladas and huevos rancheros. In the evenings we would descend the cliff face to the sleepy town, where we ate Argentinian barbecue from an outdoor kitchen crowded with stray dogs, watching the sun set. We slept like we had never slept before or have since; deep and long to the sound of the Pacific Ocean.
