From grabbing the last book in the library to leaving a hefty tome on the ferry, I’ve really messed this one up in the past. But the solution is now clear
My first holiday reading disaster was also my first disaster holiday: a French exchange when I was 14 and every decision I made at every juncture was wrong. Instead of three days, I went for three weeks; instead of an urban sprawl that might at least have smelled like south London, I went to Noirmoutier, an island so tranquil, so isolated, that you could only entertain an escape fantasy for the 20 minutes a day when the tide was out.
I stayed with a minuscule family, all quite self-contained. Some nights, the chattiest thing in the house was whatever crustacea they still had alive in the fridge. Some days, the only words I could understand were the names of meals, which I could have guessed from the time. The loneliness was brutal and the hours immense.
