Mark Woods: Holidays prove a test of friendship

With staycactions still all the rage in these times of perma-austerity, a tent or cottage here in our green and pleasant land will be home to thousands of families for the week.

Another increasingly popular tactic to keep holiday costs down is to go away with others who have youngsters of a similar age.

Going away with people you either aren’t related to or haven’t known long enough to have witnessed warts-and-all brings with it a host of issues where the inner workings of family life, your family life, are exposed.

Discipline is normally one of the first touch points to rear its head on a shared holiday. Throw one family with an easy attitude to boundary-pushing children together with another who leap on the smallest transgression and you’ve mixed yourself a pretty foul cocktail.

Food’s another one. Bringing out the Coco Pops on the first morning only to discover out that your fellow parents are serving up Fruit and Fibre as a holiday treat is a crushing blow.

At the other end of the day there isn’t a parent alive who secretly hopes other people’s children turn out to be appalling readers compared to their own when its time for bedtime stories. As is often the way though their mean-spiritedness tends to backfire as they smile through what can only be described as a beautiful and moving rendition of a school book quite clearly a stage or two up the phonics tree from the ones coming home in their own child’s bag.

We all have our foibles though of course and despite differences of parenting approach, it does us all good to see the good, the bad and the ugly in how people we know in public live their lives in private.

But despite that, one thing remains an absolute no, no when it comes to choosing holiday pals. If you know a couple who swear they never, ever argue, avoid a vacation with them at all costs. The pressure that will bring to bear on you and your partner to cease the bickering which sees you through each and every day will be intolerable.

Twitter @mark_r_woods