work in progress

On Holidays

On Holidays

A voluntary exile. A purposeful disruption from the normal run of life. The desire to ‘go on holiday’, like the desire to have children, can only keep recurring by episodes of selective amnesia. Every year, people have awful, traumatic experiences in foreign countries, but yet they keep coming back for more - why?

I’ve recently been on holiday. As holidays go, it wasn’t too bad. It had several enjoyable moments. But already, I can feel that the bad bits, of which there were also several: the tedium of the flight, for example, and the frustration of having constant access to all my books and music, are fading into the background. The real holiday is being replaced in my mind by a fictional holiday, with all the bad bits cut out. Already, when people ask me if I had a good time, I feel the urge to lie to them and make it sound better than it was. I’m not sure why this is. I think I might feel ashamed of telling people that I didn’t have a good enough time.

When I think of holidays, I just think of the good bits. When I am considering planning a holiday,  the last thing I think about is the practicalities. This is the first trick that holidays pull on you. Because if you thought about the booking of holidays, the dilemmas of packing, the trauma of travel and the inevitable disappointment on arrival, then you would probably decide to stay at home. The holiday in its infancy, its foetal stage, much like the ultrasound scan of a 3-month-old dictator in the womb, does not resemble the tyrannical misery-inducing force it is going to become. The pre-natal holiday is a vague confluence of elements - blue skies, sun, food, ‘culture’ - that are barely thought about. They are just images in the mind’s eye: a beach in the afternoon; the turquoise blue sea; a meal with people one hasn’t ever met laughing across a table; a hotel balcony and exotic guitar music drifting up from the town square. That none of these events will materialise, or if they do, their specificity will annihilate the pleasure that the vagueness of anticipation allows, hardly crosses the mind. After all, when thinking of holiday, very little does. 

The actual experience of a holiday will vary, depending mainly on one factor: how much money you have. The old adage about money not buying happiness, but buying a first class ticket whilst you are looking for it, is most directly applicable to the holiday situation. Money allows you to smooth the rough edges off even the most unpleasant experiences. Money buys you a more exclusive, less crowded destination; expensive seats on flights at reasonable times of the day. Taxis - another expense - eliminate the effort at each end of the flight. Then there are the hotel suites, beaches, restaurants etc. In this sense, money makes for better holidays. The only thing to be said against having this kind of money is that it must be so insulating that the transit from one state of luxury to another must be about as fascinating as the transit from the living room to the bedroom. 

For some, only the random intrusion of unwanted interventions that relative poverty foists upon us can make for a successful holiday. This would accord with the theory that happiness is not something that can be planned, but rather always waits in ambush where you least expect it. By that token, a holiday that goes exactly as planned is, paradoxically, a disaster. In the worst of all possible disaster scenarios, when friends or colleagues ask you how your holiday went, you would simply be able to hand them the brochure and say, ‘that’. Not being able to do that is one of the luxuries of the budget holiday. A luxury the rich cannot afford.

The holiday brochure, along with the communist manifesto and the airline magazine, are the most mendacious works of literature yet published. The most obviously manifest falsehood is the complete lack of beggars and thieves in holiday brochures. Beggars are everywhere in the modern world, and we are all used to seeing them at home. They scarcely become more exotic in a foreign country, although we tend to feel less responsibility for them. They are not our beggars: we didn’t make them destitute, and we can safely ignore them. Thieves on the other hand, can’t be ignored. The herd of tourists, ignorant of local places, customs and prices represents, for the thief or swindler, the equivalent of the home shopping experience. Being robbed abroad is an integral part of a great number of people’s holiday experience. The ideal holiday brochure would offer you a portfolio of criminal experiences: pickpocketed on an escalator in Barcelona; robbed in a Warsaw hotel room; mugged on a Caribbean beach. Who hasn’t sat for hours in the dreary and frightening interior of a foreign police station, ready to be taken through a casting directory of local pimps and hoods? That is what a truthful brochure would include.

A holiday always disappoints, but we always come back. That’s because a holiday is metaphorical. What is a holiday, but the dramatic enactment of life’s eternal search for happiness? It is a fantasy, sustained in community, that happiness is an achievable finished state. How do we know we can be happy? Because we had it - for that afternoon, on a hillside in Kashmir, on a beach in Malaga. And once happiness has been achieved, our gut instinct tells us that since it has been achieved once, it can be repeated ad infinitum, and drawn out for ever. Of course this isn’t true. The thing that makes that afternoon, that evening so perfect is the very fact of the rupture from normal activity. To draw it out for several months would be pointless: that would become the new routine, and only something completely different would seem like paradise. Enjoying holiday then, the concept of holiday, depends not just on the involuntary amnesia of forgetting the peripheral agonies of travel, but also on willfully submitting to a collective fantasy that happiness is something other than a state of mind. In that dictatorship, happiness is a place, and that place is called Holiday.

Snowbound

Learn to Read Spanish in 6 Months

Up to a reasonable level of fluency isn't too difficult for an English speaker, and much easier if you have a bit of Latin or French behind you. I decided to use the Easy Reader series from European Schoolbooks Publishing. They do four languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. Wait- that's five. Anyway, they publish each language in 4 series: A (600 words), B (1200 words), C (2000 words) and D (2500 words). After finishing all four levels, you are more or less ready to set off on newspapers and, starting with fairly easy ones, proper novels. I already used this series when I was learning Russian, several years ago. I decided to work on my Spanish, of which I knew a few basics, at the beginning of this year. I have now read, let me see...13 of these books, although that's less than half the range available in the Spanish series. What's great about these readers, in my opinion, and what sets them apart from other graded readers, is the wealth of great literature that has been adapted from classic and contemporary authors. This means that whilst you are learning a language, you are also getting a great overview of foreign literature, so that you can carry on reading the authors you liked when you get to a better standard. Each of the books is illustrated, usually quite well, and helpful vocab is supplied, along with exercises at the end of each chapter.  Anyway, here are quick reviews of all the titles I read, just in case you want to try them out.


Level A


Las Tres de la Madrugada - Miguel Bunuel
Considering the limited vocabulary we have to work with here, Las Tres is a pretty gripping read. It all takes place on a train and the vocab is pretty essential for modern Spanish. 8/10
Los Carros Vacios - Francisco Garcia Pavon
Probably the most difficult in the A series that I read. A murder mystery introducing the character of Police chief Plinio, who pops up in a couple more books in the series. Recommended 9/10
Marcelino Pan y Vino - Jose Maria Sanchez Silva
A bizarre and probably touching religious story about a boy who keeps a statue of Jesus in the attic that he talks to. Bizarrely, it also talks to him. It's a bit boring, and my Spanish was so bad, I wasn't sure if I was reading it right or it was supernatural. 6/10


Level B


Lista de Locos y otros alfabetos - Bernardo Atxaga
A series of surreal stories based on letters of the alphabet by a Basque writer. I have to admit, I found this a grind. The language is a lot harder than the A books, and the subject is random. At one point, the author has a debate and watches a football match with the letters of the alphabet. At least I think that's what was happening. I certainly learned a lot from reading this, and it was probably the most difficult 'B', so you should read it last, not first. 6/10
Las inquietudes de Shanti Andia - Pio Baroja
This was probably my favourite book of the whole series. It is the story of a boy who grows up to be a ships captain, and the adventures he encounters on his travels, and back at home. Even in this easy reader, bowdlerised version, the writing was lyrical, impressionistic, and the story was very exciting. I fully intend to read the original one of these days. 10/10
Amnesia - Fernando Lalana
From the sublime to the ridiculous. After reading this I wish I had amnesia. For a start the language in this book is so simple it really ought to be in the A section. Secondly, the plot is so far-fetched, it makes most Hollywood blockbusters seem like a Ken Loach film. It's something about a secret agent losing his memory and then meeting a girl and then... oh, you can make up the rest yourself. 3/10
Lazarillo de Tormes - Anon
This is one of those really old Spanish classics that has been adapted for the series. It's the story of a young man and his apprenticeship to a succession of awful, awful masters, the things they do to him, and the tricks which young Lazarillo learns to cope with them. The stories are ironically written, and full of bawdy, cruel humour. Somewhat old fashioned vocab. Recommended 9/10
Raro - Benjamin Prado
Raro means 'strange', and this book is a bit. Another tough one - or maybe it's modern literature that I'm struggling with. To start with, the vocab notes were all exactly one page out of sequence, which became extremely irritating. The story is a melancholy and ironic perspective of a young man who has little faith in Spanish society or his parents generation. I didn't really take to it, although the language was satisfyingly difficult, and I learned a lot of vocab. 6/10


Level C


Cuentos - Ignacio Aldecoa
I get the impression that Aldecoa is a big name in Spanish fiction of the 20th century. These stories are acutely observed vignettes about life in the lower classes in Spain. They are slow and lyrical, and nothing much happens, but the poetic beauty of the language is evident, and the stories have a touching truthfulness about them. The one about the old man whose dog gets run over made my cry over my cappuccino. I've ruined that one for you. 8/10
El Conde Lucanor - Don Juan Manuel
Another highlight of the series, and another classic from the 14th Century, no less. The Count Lucanor asks his advisor, Patronio for advice to help him govern, and the wise advisor gives him guidance, in 10 stories, each of which points a moral. The stories are great in themselves - like Aesop or La Fontaine, but with a more human and humorous touch. You get hooked after two or three, and wish there were a lot more. Another to come back to 10/10.
Papel Mojado - Juan Jose Millais 
A detective story with a difference. A man's friend is murdered, so he decides to track down the killer in order to help himself finish the novel he always wanted to write. He finishes the novel, and finds the killer, but neither is what he, or the reader, expects. The tone of the book is deeply cynical, and darkly humorous, and the author likes to play tricks on you, but with your Spanish at level C, you can cope with that, can't you? 8/10
Las Hermanas Coloradas - Francisco Garcia Pavon
Hooray, it's the return of Plinio, everyone's favourite Spanish detective. Here, he comes to Madrid to investigate the disappearance of the crimson twins. It's standard police procedural stuff, but then I love standard police procedural. This is a bit like Maigret in Spain, but no worse for all that. 8/10


Level D


Tres Cuentos - Luis Mateo Diez
As I write, there are only three books available in the D echelons. Perhaps few venture this far, or maybe people just go on to newspapers or whatnot. The other books available are Don Quixote parts 1 and 2, which need no introduction, and which I didn't read, and one other. This is the only D I partook in. 3 short stories (10 pages or so each) but with a lot of new vocab. Tres Cuentos is one of only two in the series which are complete works, without any adaptation for easy reading. Not surprisingly, the level jump is a bit of a jolt, but after this, you can pretty much read anything.