When a holiday isn't a holiday

IT is strongly rumoured in the neighbourhood that we have now entered a new year, and I need a holiday. A Highland Hogmanay calls for grit and grim determination. Toe to toe, you slug it out with the season until, inevitably, you keel over. Hogmanay always wins. You totter back to your corner with no idea whether it’s Christmas or Easter.

- Joe Gibbs

Last year, I treated my hardworking wife to an overseas break—a short weekend in Stornoway in the island of Lewis. It did wonders for our appreciation of home comforts, which is, after all, the real point of a holiday. If you’ve never arrived in the Serenissima of the far North-West on a dreich February Sunday evening as black as Wee Free Sabbath best, then you haven’t lived.

In fact, we were lucky to. The Golden Ocean Chinese restaurant was the only place open for business in a town that’s still deep in shock at having acquired a Sunday ferry service eight years ago. Despite being in ominous Cromwell Street, the restaurant was ablaze with light and keen for our custom. God bless ’em. Who knows what glares they must endure from the sabbatarians on their ways back from the kirk.

I thought I might suggest a return—perhaps splashing out on a Friday with full board this time—but it came to my notice there really was no need. According to companies making extortionate seasonal deliveries to our area, we no longer live on the mainland—most of the Highlands & Islands is now classified as ‘Overseas’.

Although this means we pay considerably more for our lifesaving food parcels from Fortnums, at least we no longer have to travel to get to an island or abroad.