Ian MacMillan: Would anyone want to holiday here?

Actually, “What’s this little place?” was the second of my mother’s summer sayings. The other one was always delivered in a serious and solemn tone as though she was a newsreader delivering tragic news or a judge passing sentence. As we chugged up the A1 to Scotland in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we’d often see a car broken down at the side of the road with its bonnet up. Steam would be clouding from an overheated radiator and a man with his jacket off would be peering at the engine. A woman would be comforting children and my mother would intone “That’s somebody’s holiday spoilt!” and my dad would nod sagely. I would remark from the back seat that if my dad tried driving at more than 30 miles an hour we might actually get to Scotland before it was time to pack up and go home. They would ignore me, of course. So, as we passed the Doncaster Bus Stop the other day I said the line: “What’s this little place?” My wife smiled indulgently and said “I hope my plants have survived” and history repeated itself through the generations.

When we got in the house, though, I thought I’d carry on the holiday motif. I looked out of the window and pretended that we were near the sea. “The tide must be out,” I said, pointing to the trees at the end of the garden and the cemetery beyond.

I said “I wonder where we should go for our tea?” and “Do you think we’ll have time for a stroll on to the moors before it gets dark?” My wife wasn’t listening. She was outside watering her veg.

I didn’t care. I went upstairs for a shower and used some of the shower gel I’d pinched from a posh hotel. I lolled about in my dressing gown and made a cup of tea. I felt tired so lay down on the bed for a nap and I stuck a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. I’d pinched that from the posh hotel too. As the afternoon sun streamed through the curtains, I somehow felt like I was still on my holidays and I began to nod off. I started dreaming that Darfield really was a holiday destination and you could visit Mad Geoff’s the Barbers to watch traditional skills being practised before you had a cuppa at the Museum and then suddenly in my dream the tide was coming in and the seawater was hot and I had to get away and…

I woke up. I’d spilled tea all over the bed. That’s somebody’s holiday spoilt…