Welcome to Everytown by Julian Baggini

Author:Julian Baggini [Julian Baggini]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781862079199
Publisher: Granta Books
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Hefted Holidaymakers

Holidaymakers at Cala d’Or, Mallorca

‘I’d like to go where everyone else is going, please,’ I said as breezily as I could to the consultant at the Co-op travel in Wickersley.

‘And where’s that?’ she replied, as though I had simply named a resort she hadn’t recognized.

‘You tell me!’ She looked understandably flummoxed by this, so I tried again. ‘What’s your most popular destination?’

‘Oooo, I don’t know,’ she said, as though she was the last person in the world who could be expected to know the answer. ‘Greece, I’d say.’

‘Greece?’ I replied incredulously. ‘Noooooo.’

‘I didn’t know I was doing a quiz!’

I was being a little unfair since I already knew the answer. At least, I knew where most Brits went abroad for their holidays: Spain remains Britain’s number one holiday destination. The gap between it and second place France varies according to different studies, but it seems that it would be huge if it weren’t for the popularity of weekend breaks in France. Within Spain, the Balearic Islands are the most popular areas, and of these, the top resort is Mallorca. What’s more, most people going to the island still opt for traditional package deals. Once again, although we are often presented as a country whose tastes are rapidly developing, the reality is that England is much as it was.

So I had to break it to her: I wanted to go to Mallorca. After a cup of tea and a browse through some of the options I settled on a hotel in Cala d’Or which I was pleased to see had a 100% approval rating for its food. Maybe it did a carvery. I noticed the swimming pools and tennis courts and imagined myself spending an invigorating healthy week not going very far. There were some optional extras I could order, such as a ‘celebration cake’ or a ‘celebration pack’. I declined.

For most people, their annual trip is something they spend months planning and looking forward to, not to mention saving for. The average family now spends close to £3,000 on its holiday. Arriving at Birmingham International Airport for my break in the sun it was hard to see why they bothered. Long queues, exceptional these days on scheduled flights, are still routinely suffered by charter passengers, who are expected to check in two to three hours before departure. Five minutes after my check-in desk was announced the queue was already so long that I gave up and went for a coffee. I came back 50 minutes later, the queue was still enormous and the person behind me when I quit had only just checked in.

Many people loathe airports, but I usually like the buzz of anticipation, and the sense of being surrounded by people coming and going from all over the world. But here in charter city you couldn’t move for white Anglo-Saxons and the atmosphere was more like Victoria Coach Station on a bank holiday weekend. It was much the same on the plane, which felt like a bus trip to the seaside, without the singing.

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