In any case, I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood family holidays lately because, somehow, I now have my own family and I should probably take them on holiday before too long. In my mum and dad’s defence, we did go abroad now and then. Being stolid members of the provincial middle class, every other summer would be spent bouncing around the vast campsites of Normandy and the Loire, my sister and I losing our minds over the existence of pain au chocolat and marvelling at the teak-tanned, platinum-haired Dutch kids who seemed to rule these places. I recounted this to my son, who regarded me blankly. I guess that, 30 years on, things like ‘chocolate croissants!’ and ‘children from the Netherlands!’ just aren’t as exotic as they once were.
