fear of frying
So we’re back, with a confession. (Might as well out yourself, before the 
We have been on a plane. To Greece.
In the happy green family as popularly conceived, when holiday plans change at the last minute and the parent who doesn’t speak any foreign languages is landed with the children for two weeks, they chorus in perfect unison: ‘So who needs the Eurostar to Biarritz? What a great excuse to rediscover the joys of the English Seaside, just like our role models 
In the real world, they leap on a heaven-sent opportunity to point out that as I took the job that prevents us from going to France en famille, I have forfeited all choice in the matter, and can I please find them a nice Greek island where everybody speaks English and there’s calamari, a pool and 
Which, too busy and beaten down to resist, I do, hoping to manage a modest holiday myself, afterwards. Maybe learning to make a 
But inevitably, as I paged through the seductions of the web, with the rain once again haemorrhaging outside, an evil 
And it is so hard, this no flying thing. Carrots every week of the year, I can stand. Biking everywhere I actually enjoy, except when it’s really wet and cold and dark. Even having to pay so much for the aforementioned carrots that new clothes have become a distant memory doesn’t bother me that much, especially as all 
I can deal with all of that. But I really miss hot sun and big landscapes. So the sprite barely needed to feed me the lines…
1 How dare I sacrifice my children’s little window of happiness to my own, almost certainly futile, principles? (this one comes up a lot). It has to be said that less sacrificed children would be hard to find. But still. All children know things could always be better.
2 Conversely, my own emotional equilibrium, fragile at best, would not survive their smug, honey-brown bounciness, especially after eight weeks locked in a 
3 And finally, how could I possibly be expected to shoulder the immense burden of saving the planet almost unassisted, without even a few days of recuperation in a place warm enough to be outdoors without yomping up cliffs or building bonfires? (I think this must have been the argument that sent the Camerons off to 
Or maybe they thought Cornwall cancelled out Turkey. Now there’s a policy that might catch on).
So that’s how it happened. Mr Fixit took them for two weeks, then he came home to work, and I went out, and the minibeasts had a whole three weeks jumping in and out of a swimming pool as blue as 
And it was nice, it was fine – it was certainly wonderful not doing housework for a week – and the little ferry across the bay was charming.
But…
The last time I was on a Greek island, a decade ago, the 
This time, children from three continents watched the Olympics on the hotel’s giant screen, kept up with the football scores in its internet room, foraged in its freezer chest for Walls ice creams by different names and warbled 
I felt like Little Kay in 
You can’t see things the way you used to. You no longer look at quad bikes and jetskis as a fun way to get around. You just see a carbon footprint the size of 
More and more, we rush round the world, making it like home, and then complaining about everybody else doing the same. The greedier we are for calamari in London, the fewer there are in Greece.
I think it must be a 
