Reader, it’s important to tell you that I’ve never been to Greece in my life. Not once. But I might be going, for the very first time, in the spring. And so, for the last week or so, all my dreams have featured fresh fish cooked to flaky perfection, a swimming pool into which I shall venture no deeper than my waist (I can’t swim), and the heat of the sun that not even the climate crisis can make happen in the UK in April.
I don’t come with a history of exotic foreign holidays. Travelling abroad fell under the umbrella of familial duty: “Going Home”, AKA a brief return to the place where my parents were born (and coincidentally more and more foreign to them the longer they lived in the UK) in order to keep the ties of kinship going and remind us of our roots. I should say we didn’t do idyllic UK-based holidays either. I read about caravans in Enid Blyton books and watched Vaseline-lensed ads for CenterParcs and knew neither was in my immediate future. I made peace with it. We just weren’t a “going on holiday” type of family. It didn’t bother me. I harbour no resentment, and honestly, feel largely equanimous when I consider this “gap” in my life experience.
