Can A Holiday Together Ruin Friendships?

Get it right and every night is party night, says Anna Maxted, but there’s nothing like sharing a villa with other people’s kids to spark unexpected tensions

My husband, sons and I have had the best times of our lives on shared breaks with our favourite families. Last summer in France, one warm lavender-scented night, as I teetered on the edge of the pool with around 20 adults and kids, playing a daft push-me-in game, after a sumptuous collaboratively cooked barbecue, I thought, this is as close to perfect as it gets. However, you do have to get the mix right. If I consider holidays over the years, many spent with an eclectic, engaging variety of friends and friends of friends (the wild card element of this arrangement is always interesting), I do have a few grumbles.

Such as the child who called my husband “fat” and wasn’t reprimanded. Or the friend who thought it acceptable to wolf all the smoked salmon. Those parents who drank all night, while I supervised their reckless, rather violent young offspring in the pool. The couple who allowed their children so many sweets that everyone else was obliged to let their kids feast on junk too.

Those, incidentally, are the gripes I can laugh about. We still don’t speak to the family we shared a villa with in Italy when our kids were tiny – their tight-lipped disapproval of our under-fives’ less than perfect table manners meant we were enormously glad never to see them again – and the compliment was returned.