Steven Boykey Ridley
Steven Boykey Ridley

The anxiety of the holiday season is upon us. Why anxiety? Because the anxiety of our daily lives, distracted by matters of career and family and politics and bills to pay must now be replaced by an even greater one — how the hell am I supposed to relax for a few weeks and, if I don’t, what is the point?

So let me be your guide, because I am a well-known worrier and complainer, and yet, for a few weeks I turn into this soft-focused hippie, smiling at all and sundry, given to surprising and uncharacteristic behaviour, such as gazing at sunsets and contemplating the meaning of it all. Actually, I don’t turn into that at all, but it’s a nice thought.

A caveat. For those of you lucky or rich enough to be darting off to other countries for sightseeing, fuggedaboudit. You will not relax. You will spend endless hours in queues, you will worry about your passport, the exchange rate, whether you are being ripped off, the possessions in your South African house now being sold in a market in Abuja, and whether the cat is dead. You will suffer from jetlag or strange sniffles or foreigner’s tummy. You will forget that unguent or this panacea in the bathroom cabinet at home. You will take lots of awful photographs.

And then you will come back and tell everyone how wonderful it was, and my god, this museum or that food or this show. You may even believe it yourself. Don’t. You will be having a terrible time. At least compared to what you should be doing. Which is relaxing.

At a place in South Africa that is not your home (relaxing at home is cheating; it doesn’t count when it is the holiday season).Of course, this leads to the perplexing question of what comprises holiday relaxation. Folks, this a tough one. I have known people who relax by diving with the sharks, or abseiling, or white-water rafting, but of course those people are a little odd, and will not live as long as I will.

My wife is an activity-based relaxer: 6am body surfing, long hikes, mountain climbing, kayaking. It seems to work well for her, and occasionally I reluctantly join in one of two of the activities, and reluctantly enjoy it. Why? Because it increases my anticipation of the menagerie of available holiday naps.

Let me count the ways: there is the underrated post-breakfast nap at about 9am (short and deep), preferably with a large breakfast settled in the stomach. Then there is the pre-lunch nap (light and airy), a biological requirement to conserve energy fora couple of gins and tonic and the afternoon buffet. Then, of course, the late-afternoon nap (long and snory), beloved by all but the most damaged of people. I have been known to do all three, with remaining capacity for a good night’s rest. It’s a skill which requires practice. At least 10 000 hours.
Which brings me to the two other relaxation activities that require careful nurturing. The first is arguing. This is not possible with just a few people, such as a single family, but we tend to go away in large clumps. This means there are many people at the dinner table, usually more than 10. This means an opportunity for a good fight: about politics or art or celebrities or sport — anything really. Because everyone is on holiday and dinners are usually alcohol-fuelled (and no one will remember it in the morning), a good fight is enormously refreshing. I wrote my first novel because of a good fight in the Eastern Cape. God, was I angry. It is delicious, because everybody considers it merely exercise for the real thing, which happens in real life, a few weeks later.
The second is reading. This is one of the reasons why we ban TV over the season. We would also ban cellphones, but then my kids might take legal action against me and I would probably cheat anyway. But no TV. Lots and lots of books. To be exercised in the gaps between napping, eating, arguing, and forced marches.

There is an allowance of four days per book. Anybody not finishing a book in four days has to go the entire day without napping. Actually that’s not true. This is a rule I set for myself only. You can only imagine how irritating I must be, so I don’t impose it on the larger group. I am a very tolerant person.

Anyway, back to books. At the end of the season, when people ask me how the holiday was, I say that it was really relaxing — I slept, ate, and read seven books, including one by a 19th century Russian author. Then no one speaks to me for a few weeks. But it is worth it, because I come home very relaxed.


Steven Boykey Sidley’s fourth novel, Free Association, will be published in May 2017 by Pan Macmillan

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