Why do we have pre-holiday jitters?

The last few days before going away can be fraught with uncertainties

“Off to California in the morning,” goes the song. Well, in my case, not California but Boston. I am getting ready to go away as I didn’t have a summer holiday. Getting ready, with all those lovely days ahead to go, always sounds such a joy, but there’s too much to do and see before you go.

It’s partly a question of being realistic about what you’ll need – I can’t be the only person who has striven to get exactly the right amount and type of paper handkerchiefs and chocolate and sleeping pills, as if nobody in America ever sold such things. Then there’s the question of the weather – I have never forgotten an editor of the New Statesman saying bitterly on radio that wherever he went abroad dressed for the typical weather, the weather was without exception “untypical”.

In the end I suspect it’s only children who think solely of the joys to come; for most of us the days before the great journey are spent trying to make sure everything doesn’t collapse while we’re away. Who is going to not just feed but play with the cat and has she got the instructions? It doesn’t much matter if you forget or fail to stop the papers – why, you’ll find the Observer waiting for you when you get back – but what about the milk? I can’t help wondering whether our conviction that holidays are so agreeable is because whatever it’s like, it’s probably better than those last days before you go.

I have had to ring my host to get the address we’re going to; I wrote it down on a bit of paper that I now can’t find. You’ll probably think I’ve invented that. How very much I wish I had.

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