ARE you planning a holiday that really establishes your middle-class credentials? Read our guide to the most pretentious breaks.
Two weeks in a shitty cottage
Find the most wretched hovel you can. Ideally it should have: totally fucked plumbing; an outdoor toilet near hazards like a well and barbed wire; a rat cockily sitting on the breakfast table in the morning.
Your break will be miserable, but there’s nothing more middle class than being able to afford a fun holiday but choosing not to.
Anywhere with local customs you’d just ignore in Britain
You wouldn’t be seen dead watching nerdy morris dancing in the UK, but if it’s ‘traditional Catalan dancers’ prancing around with sticks and bells that’s OK.
The same applies to countless other activities, eg. watching a local baker make Sicilian wild boar pie using a process that’s basically the same as the ones from Melton Mowbray.
Interrailing
The classic A-level student’s rite of passage. Prepare for it by imagining endless drug-fuelled clubbing with hot Spaniards, then realise it’s mainly just you and your mates looking at old buildings and having a few beers.
In fact, a lot like going on holiday with your parents but with the added fun of reading loads of train timetables and staying in a hostel with people who may have knives.
The dreaded educational holiday
Destination not critical. You can bore your kids shitless with fossils in Dorset just as easily as you can with the history of Seville Cathedral. The main thing is to feel superior as a parent as you instill in them a lifelong hatred of learning.
Getting kidnapped by bandits
In your quest to go ‘off the beaten track’ do something unimaginably stupid, such as a walking holiday in Iraq. When you’re finally released by militia fighters, proudly announce you’re planning a yachting holiday in Somalia next.
