Package delivery

© Simon Poulter 2018

As I write, poolside in Majorca, London is hotter and, apparently, will remain so until October. This is, frankly, a ludicrous state of affairs: October should be when railways come to a standstill due to the wrong kind of leaves, not as a result of the line buckling due to heat. We’re familiar with the concept of the ‘Indian Summer’, but they used to be those first few days of September back in the classroom when you’d look longingly outside at lengthening shadows on a still-sundappled school field. Not closer to Halloween. That, though, was when weather was normal. When just-fading suntans amongst classmates were the result of two weeks on one of the Costas for some, or a rust-gathering fortnight in Wales for others.

I took my first package holiday at the age of 13, to Ibiza. Obviously before whistles, E and foam parties. In fact it was the first foreign holiday my parents had ever taken. Save for brief school trips to Delft and Boulogne, this was my first proper excursion to a foreign land, where the sight of policemen with actual guns and the mystery of a bidet were all part of the discovery, along with the prickly heat, insomnia and excruciating ear pain caused by my first flight. Being a package, that Ibiza holiday had other traditions to observe: negotiating the hotel buffet, a donkey trek, a first sip of sangria, and the smell of tanned leather in one of those glorious emporia selling everything from belts to leather book protectors.

This will be all-too familiar to many, if not most reading this. Even if ‘staycations’ in bijou Cornish cottages have transformed from the stuff of childhood nightmares (step forward, the ‘charming’ village of Delabole…) to being the preserve today of most of Hampstead, last year there were 70 million trips abroad made by Brits, including the 15 million who, every year, make a beeline for Spain. This year 25% more of us have chosen to holiday at home, taking advantage of the global warming that has kept temperatures in parts of the UK at Faustian levels, along with the effects of the weak pound on tourist euros, the earliest of Brexit dividends.

Well not me. I have returned to the package holiday. I have reacquired a British tradition that took off in the 1950s as post-war austerity lightened a little, and tour operators put together the first air-hotel packages to destinations around the Med. In 1950 one million Brits bought package holidays, a number that had stretched to 24 million by 1994. The common denominator over those 44 years, and to me now, remains simple: convenience. The Internet may have made holidaying a more bespoke experience (especially for me who has, for as long as I’ve been able to, constructed my holidays via take-you-own-risk jabs of a dart at hotel websites), but I’d actually forgotten just how easy packaged holidays are, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Yes, an all-inclusive hotel like ours in Majorca can, at times, be zoo-like, from the uncoordinated, unchoreographed melee that is breakfast to the gridlock of Aryan-blond German children making any attempt at swimming in the pool nigh on pointless. But relax and accept that being in Majorca during August (a necessity due to my girlfriend being a teacher) comes with certain conditions, and you can be - well, blissfully - chilled out.

I’m even enjoying the evening entertainment… Yes, even with my nailed-on, NME-cast muso sensibilities, I’ve accepted the 1980s variety night and the Blues Brothers tribute act as part and parcel of the family entertainment hotels like ours serve up throughout Spain and across southern Europe at this time of year. I will even fess up to enjoying an extremely dodgy band of ageing German headbangers doing classic rock covers at one of our resort’s main bars. They may have looked like Spinal Tap-meets-The Comic Strip’s Bad News, their lead singer’s German accent as convincing on Free’s Alright Now as The Scorpions’ Klaus Meine singing “I follow the Moskva, Down to Gorky Park, Listening to the wind of change…”) and the lead guitarist, soloing on his Flying-V out in the crowd frankly comical, but this is what holiday entertainment should be about. Cheesy, yes, but ridiculously good fun.

For my girlfriend’s teenage daughters, this holiday has everything they could possibly want: the opportunity to do nothing. Get up, sit by the pool, have lunch, swim in the pool, have dinner, sit at the pool bar, go to bed, mostly without looking up from their iPhones sucking up the free hotel WiFi. Much like being at home, except without evening entertainment from the likes of ‘Eva and Dan’. It’s here that I begin to deconstruct my own holiday history. Much of the last thirty years has been spent on endless American road trips, living out Godfather fantasies in Sicily and generally being a restless spirit in a hire car. Last October’s pre-50th birthday cruise around the Caribbean changed all that. Normally I’d drive right past any hotel with more than one lift, but there I was, amid several thousand mostly elderly punters queuing at 5 in the evening for the bottomless dinner buffet. I was holidaying amongst people. Too many, I grant you, but somewhat reluctantly I’d signed up for the mass holiday experience and I wasn't doing too badly with it. This trip is that, too, with the major difference being that I have allowed myself to become stupidly relaxed. I’ve so far spent entire days in the sea, floating about on a large pink lilo. No stress about wanting to do something, just bobbing about. The customary rock biography (Philip Norman’s excellent Mick Jagger, since you ask) is barely a few chapters in, such is the constant draw of the cooling pool, even if it is more clogged than the centre of Rome at rush hour.

Now, I know some of you reading this might be thinking: “What’s the big deal? This is our holiday every year!”, but you’ve got to remember, that hasn’t been me for a very, very long time. There’s a great deal of snobbery, especially amongst the middle classes, about holidaying. But really there’s nothing at all wrong with the package holiday. This one has provided everything I could possibly want - great weather, all-inclusive food and drink, a pool and the sea not even five minutes’ walk away, a badly needed opportunity to relax with my girlfriend and some fun bonding time with her kids. I’d say that was a perfect combination, wouldn’t you?