While my brother-in-law Darragh took off for a honeymoon with his new wife Emilie, we joined my in-laws in taking the happy couple’s two-year-old daughter Lucy to Wexford. Lucy is delightful, and our own two-year-old adores her, in that way that toddlers adore and resent all their best friends with equal ferocity. They spent the first two days of our trip fighting over their favoured objects, laughing constantly as they ran between rooms, and generally cavorting like naughty spaniels. It was all quite idyllic, until I developed a severe lurgy on Day 3.
I woke to find that my joints ached and my head pounded. My throat, now cracked and crispy, was soon issuing dignified groans to my wife, demanding Lemsip and ibuprofen, a diet on which I was to subsist, from bed, for the next 24 hours.
I have just enough moral character to admit I am not a good patient. I regard being ill as nothing less than an offence against me personally. When other people get ill, they may well suffer worse symptoms or more debilitating conditions but, crucially, none of that is happening to me, reality’s true protagonist. When I am ill, by contrast, it’s very clear to me that the world must pause and reflect on how this has happened. How I, specifically, have been failed.
Suffice it to say, being ill on holiday used to be the worst thing that could ever happen, either to me or those unfortunate enough to be within moaning distance. I have, however, slowly come to realise its benefits. Chief among these is that being ill does get you out of some of the childcare grind, especially if your in-laws are in tow.
A lot of the mythical enjoyment of taking small children on holiday is, let’s face it, a swizz made up by photo-frame manufacturers. Almost all the everyday hurdles of childcare – sleeping, feeding, scheduling – are exacerbated by new locations where amenities are difficult to predict and routines are impossible to maintain. I have not yet lived through a full and busy day with a toddler that has ended with me saying, ‘This would have been easier if I’d done it, while sweating, in a place where I don’t know how to use the TV.’
Meanwhile, the benefits of holidays – relaxation, novel experiences, cultural enrichment – are all but prohibited by the above responsibilities, while also being lost on small children. It could be argued that 99% of holiday parenting, to paraphrase Hank Hill’s assessment of Christian Rock, doesn’t make parenting better, it just makes holidays worse.
A whole day spent in bed, though, shaking from pain, was as close to an actual rest as I’ve had in over a year. While my unfeeling nurses took off for the beach and a cheery trip to a local famine ship, I rejoiced in the sick splendour of doing nothing at all. I rose the next day, refreshed and ebullient, ready for every remote control that flew my way.
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