Freud on Holiday

We are virtuous travellers. They are vulgar tourists.

Woman in the Sun by Edward Hopper (1961)

This summer, I’ve decided to end poverty. That is, my own relative wholly endurable and British poverty.

In Great Britain, social class depends entirely on how one employs the word ‘holiday.’ The working classes use ‘holiday’ as a noun: (I’m off on holiday, mate.) The middle classes use ‘holiday’ as a verb (And where does one holiday?)

This grammatical difference is more instructive than it may appear. The noun defines the stationary, the unmoving, a state of being. The verb implies action or doing. You can hear your English teacher right now… verbs are doing words.

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On our holidays, we proles plump for packaged jaunts to Benidorm, Mallorca, and Malaga. Go abroad to any sun-soaked British outpost, and you’ll encounter Brits reenacting the Empire. Legions of hot-dogged satyrs gleefully butcher the language, maltreat the waiters, and denigrate delicate local customs.

Before booking a holiday, proles check three essential criteria: How much is a pint? Can we languish all day in a British-themed pub whilst gabbing conspiratorially about paella and the early-bird Germans who bilk the sun loungers? Crucially, will our kind be indelibly visible, poxed and sunburnt, spilling over the sides of the pool, and suppurating cerveza?

The middle classes flock to Tuscany, Provence, and Nice. To rise above one’s station, one must reject the holiday of sloth and holiday with virtue. For the coveted permission to name one’s offspring Apple or Lettuce, social climbers must denounce holiday mates named Dean or Darren.

A few years back, I asked a Venetian pizzeria owner what she loved and loathed about Venice. (Inane, I know. I’d glugged enough Amarone to wash an elephant.)

“I love Venezia,” she said wistfully. “But the tourists… fanculo i tiristi!” This expression loosely translated to a vulgar slang phrase rhyming with ‘duck cough.’

She had a point. Every day, ominous cruise ships stalk the Grand Canal and puke out thousands of selfie-snapping day-trippers.

They swarm over delicate little Venice, clack a quick selfie, and scoff a paltry slice of pizza. Then the floating golems on which they arrived suck them aboard for the next cultural drive-by. Venice swells and shrinks with every belch.

Amongst those hordes skulk virtuous travellers who loathe the horde for its vulgar tourism.

With a crisp copy of The Guardian rolled beneath an armpit swaddled in ethical deodorant, Hugo and Cheska aren’t loathsome thoughtless tourists but lissom thoughtful travellers. They deplore the ‘massification’ of tourism. Hugo and Cheska know one thing: any word with ‘mass’ entwined within it is not a good thing.

They worry about the impact of overtourism on the local population. They lament the overpopulation of a planet home to eight billion others. To Hugo and Cheska, overtourism is colonial gentrification.

They hail from a hip enclave of Brixton, London. Natives of eighteen months, Hugo and Cheska watch as new arrivals who look and sound just like them, disfigure the high street. These are not gentrifiers, but benevolent conquerors. They erect monuments to their tribe. Clever little eateries with one-word names like ‘Eat.’ Chi-chi little coffee shops. Smirking little bookshops. Twee little sandwich boards. Wry little puns on matey little menus.

The new natives lament the obscene rents which swept out the fly-bitten locals. There must be something they can do. On Saturdays, at least during the summer months, the Hugos and Cheskas march against the gentrification of their slice of Brixton.

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Hugo and Cheska have perfected the modern art of public sacrifice and private indulgence. In this narcissism of minor differences, Hugo and Cheska are virtuous travellers drowning amid waves and waves of vulgar tourists.

They travel to broaden their minds. Tourists crave a selfie. Hugo and Cheska fill their virtuous trips with activity and experience. Slothful tourists shuffle around like lemmings or lounge around pools, quaffing beer the name of which they cannot pronounce.

Like their favourite Guardian columnists, Hugo and Cheska support levies and taxes on plane tickets. Anything to staunch the violent tide of overtourism and give the planet a much-needed break. They smuggle vanity through customs in a suitcase marked ‘humility.’

On Instagram, they document their plight from a swarming piazza in Florence. They ponder their impact on the local population and Grazie, signore, do you take Mastercard?

I suspect Hugo and Cheska would love nothing more than to slouch around a pool all day, chomping through the all-inclusive buffet and sinking pints of Estrella. But that would be vulgar. What’s the point of holidaying if it doesn’t increase one’s intrinsic value?

Now that I think about it, this little caper doesn’t sound like much fun.

Fuck this. I’m off to Marbella.

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