Holiday or endurance trial?

[ZedLeg]

JLIC, we don’t get the opportunity to go aboard as much as we’d like but even a couple of days up north or out to the islands can really help when we’re having a bad mental health time.

I enjoy cooking but Nef’s holiday sounds horrible, not gonna lie .

[Beany]

To be clear, I'm talking about 'going on holiday' not really appealing to me. Driving to the other end of the country and crashing on a mates couch for a few nights, pottering about and talking bollocks is something I can do.

That's close enough to a holiday for me

[Swervin_Mervin]

Thank Christ I don't have a problem shoving foreign grub down my face hole and sinking beer whilst doing sweet fvck all else (apart from occasionally having to shout at the 3yo)

Yeah I get twitchy if I sit there for much longer than necessary, but then I just amble about, view some 5hit before finding another place to shove food and booze in me.

As for taking my own cooking gear on holiday - sod that shit. If you "need" that to do your cooking, you're trying too hard with your cooking. You're on holiday, so keep it simple. If you need kit, buy some cheap crap from the local supermarket you can leave behind.

As for Nef's "holiday" - that's just unpaid work

[Nefarious]

I enjoy cooking but Nef’s holiday sounds horrible, not gonna lie .

I'm not going to lie either - this one was! (Looking at the positive, I'm seeing it as an exercise in mental fortitude )

Usually its great though.
Get up in the morning, drink a coffee in the sun, chat with folks and make a rough menu plan.
Have a bit of a wander through the extensive gardens and see what fruit/veg/herbs I can find. Maybe take the kids for a bit of foraging.
Take a trip out to the local market/town to find some interesting produce.
Chat to the local suppliers (who are actually interested because you're buying more than a meal for 2).
Come home with some honking great piece of meat and start breaking it down (I very much enjoy butchery, but don't get that much chance to practice at home).
Maybe come up with some crazy idea about firing up the massive ancient rotisserie or digging a pit for a dutch oven.
Recruit a couple of the kids to help with prep, teach a few basic knife/pastry/process skills.
Set any slow bits going, and disappear for a swim/climb/trip out for a couple of hours.
Come back and start putting the rest together. Change the plan 2 or 3 times either with new ideas, or to fit with the realities of mass catering on a 2-burner/2-oven Aga.
Fire up some music in the kitchen (aggressive techno if there's a mountain of work, maybe some laid back hip-hop if its a lighter load)
Couple of beers leading up to and during service
Sit down to a meal I actually want to eat, drink nice wine (something better than I'd choose if I were just buying for myself), accept lots of appreciative praise.
Chat and socialise while others do the clean up
Do silly drunk stuff
Rinse and repeat...

I fully appreciate its a minority view on holidaying, and not trying to sell it to anyone, but as a once-a-year change of scene, and occasionally a bit of a research exercise, it suits me a treat.

[McSwede]

That sounds ok.

I love renting a villa/house for a family holiday as I like to cook when away as well as eat locally. Going to find food and thinking of cooking with it is enjoyable for me.

The thought of going to some kind of resort filled with lots of people and their grotty kids (family own are enough) is not my idea of a holiday. I like a home away from home, I like a private pool and I like the fact that you're generally living with the locals in a nice town or village that has nice local produce for sale and nice restaurants where you eat local/regional stuff.

Each to their own I suppose but that's how I like to relax when away

[duncs500]

Nef, you're a nutter! If it (usually) makes you happy, though, good for you. I'm sure you'll find a better venue next time.

The likes of Carlos and Swerv are more aligned to my way of thinking. I used to be all about visiting interesting places, and I still am to a degree, but with the stresses of day to day life now I need a good stint of not having to think too hard. Not too fussed about pools, but some nice beach with nice sea to cool off in does me, so long as there's also good food, books and booze readily available.

If I could do a week and/or some long weekends to interesting places and then two on the beach with a book and a beer, that's just about the perfect year for me.

[ZedLeg]

My version of that is just a week at home catching up on my reading and day drinking. I normally do it around my birthday and have a big party as well.

[duncs500]

My version of that is just a week at home catching up on my reading and day drinking. I normally do it around my birthday and have a big party as well.

I understand that, I just turn into a slob if I am at home for any period of time unsupervised! I might make grand plans, and then promptly achieve about 10%.

[evostick]

To be clear, I'm talking about 'going on holiday' not really appealing to me. Driving to the other end of the country and crashing on a mates couch for a few nights, pottering about and talking bollocks is something I can do.

That's close enough to a holiday for me

Forgive if I'm out of line here Beany.

I have no idea about your personal situation other than what I've picked up from your posts on here over many, many years and no other means of communication so fuck it.

Have you explored the notion that you may be suffering from something other than depression at all and if so to what extent?

I'm not suggesting that you are not depressed.

If it is it all plausible that you may be suffering now, in your adult years, due to lingering psychological damage due to adverse circumstances or harmful parental relationships as a child, then it would be well worth considering whether your untypical behaviour and seeming inability to take pleasure from life, may stem from the fact that your emotional responses (formed at a deep level in our early years) have adapted to cope with situations outside of the ordinary spectrum of things.

As I'm sure you're aware, it's very common for kids in challenging circumstances to learn to shut things out whilst trying their damnedest to project normality to others. Admirable behaviour I'd say but if you have to do it for long enough at an early age then the stats show that you are likely to be diagnosable with what is regarded as a form of childhood PTSD. Which is more harmful to ones happiness, by all accounts, than getting TEH BAD GAY DOG AIDS.

Of course, if you were to consider yourself as in all likelihood from suffering from such a malady then it wouldn't fucking change anything in itself at all would it?. No. But if you were to learn a little about how normal cunts REACT to regular things in a normal way and then compare that to how you do, in an honest fashion, then you may start to wonder a little about it and why that might be the case. And wondering about things never did anyone any harm.

It's possible for young kids to learn to live with fear to the extent that they don't even fucking realise it anymore. That dissociative behaviour whereby they close down their own emotional responses to external stimuli gets to be the default pattern of things. It suits the brain because it's a lazy fucker and the inevitable depression doesn't take a lot of effort to sustain. They can be stuck in fight/flight mode constantly and not even know it.


Fathers, mothers are there to nurture and guide and they really fuck it up sometimes. Few can claim to have had perfect parents and I'm not one of them. If they don't teach you how to love and enjoy life and your supermodel mensa member GF doesn't then you may have learn how to to do it for yourself. I only mention this as I'd be genuinely fucking amazed if you were the end product of a nurturing family situation. No offence at all intended.

You've probably already considered it anyway.

I wish you all the best you miserable cunt.


As for the OPs question?.

That's no holiday by my definition of the word

I can only guess that it's some form of self-flagellation due to having it too easy most of the time

Sadly, I have to spend a lot of time doing shit that I don't really want to do in order to pay the mortgage so I'm quite happy to shuffle around and stare at the sea for the odd week here and there.

Looking forward to doing just that shortly.

[Beany]

To be clear, I'm talking about 'going on holiday' not really appealing to me. Driving to the other end of the country and crashing on a mates couch for a few nights, pottering about and talking bollocks is something I can do.

That's close enough to a holiday for me

Forgive if I'm out of line here Beany.

I have no idea about your personal situation other than what I've picked up from your posts on here over many, many years and no other means of communication so fuck it.

Have you explored the notion that you may be suffering from something other than depression at all and if so to what extent?

I'm not suggesting that you are not depressed.

If it is it all plausible that you may be suffering now, in your adult years, due to lingering psychological damage due to adverse circumstances or harmful parental relationships as a child, then it would be well worth considering whether your untypical behaviour and seeming inability to take pleasure from life, may stem from the fact that your emotional responses (formed at a deep level in our early years) have adapted to cope with situations outside of the ordinary spectrum of things.

As I'm sure you're aware, it's very common for kids in challenging circumstances to learn to shut things out whilst trying their damnedest to project normality to others. Admirable behaviour I'd say but if you have to do it for long enough at an early age then the stats show that you are likely to be diagnosable with what is regarded as a form of childhood PTSD. Which is more harmful to ones happiness, by all accounts, than getting TEH BAD GAY DOG AIDS.

Of course, if you were to consider yourself as in all likelihood from suffering from such a malady then it wouldn't fucking change anything in itself at all would it?. No. But if you were to learn a little about how normal cunts REACT to regular things in a normal way and then compare that to how you do, in an honest fashion, then you may start to wonder a little about it and why that might be the case. And wondering about things never did anyone any harm.

It's possible for young kids to learn to live with fear to the extent that they don't even fucking realise it anymore. That dissociative behaviour whereby they close down their own emotional responses to external stimuli gets to be the default pattern of things. It suits the brain because it's a lazy fucker and the inevitable depression doesn't take a lot of effort to sustain. They can be stuck in fight/flight mode constantly and not even know it.


Fathers, mothers are there to nurture and guide and they really fuck it up sometimes. Few can claim to have had perfect parents and I'm not one of them. If they don't teach you how to love and enjoy life and your supermodel mensa member GF doesn't then you may have learn how to to do it for yourself. I only mention this as I'd be genuinely fucking amazed if you were the end product of a nurturing family situation. No offence at all intended.

You've probably already considered it anyway.

I wish you all the best you miserable cunt.

I should probably just have a wank.

[evostick]

I should probably just have a wank.

It’s use it or lose it at your age mate

[Beany]

I should probably just have a wank.

It’s use it or lose it at your age mate

Tell me about it.

Er, I mean, I'm as virile as I ever was.

Wait, those are the same thing.

Shit.

[IanF]

Now I’ve used the mind bleach to rid myself of the image of Beany gurning....

My solution is to do both! We had a week in St. Lucia being spoilt, then home for 10 days before flying off to the Blue Ridge mountains for a week of home-cooking/eating-with-friends (farm to field stuff is amazing in Georgia - steak rivals South Africa imho), before driving to Jekyll Island for the 4S’s: sun-sea-sand-staff .

Tbh, I’m not sure even Nef would class his “holiday” as such, but then he doesn’t really work for a living (I gather) and you’re meant to do the opposite on your hols, so maybe he should say he went to “work” for a couple of weeks, but is happy to be back in his normal day-to-day of being a retiree...

[IanF]

My version of that is just a week at home catching up on my reading and day drinking. I normally do it around my birthday and have a big party as well.

I understand that, I just turn into a slob if I am at home for any period of time unsupervised! I might make grand plans, and then promptly achieve about 10%.

This

[Beany]

Now I’ve used the mind bleach to rid myself of the image of Beany gurning....

My solution is to do both!

Have a wank on holiday?

[Nefarious]

but then he doesn’t really work for a living (I gather)

Some and some. Strictly speaking I retired a couple of years ago, but I seem to have filled my "free" time with something that looks to all the world as indistinguishable from actual "work". At the moment, I'm in the middle of a 14 week renovation project on a Victorian house. When we're finished that, I've got a two kitchens, a bathroom and a big loft conversion project to do.

Doing it out of choice does make a big difference psychologically, though.

[ZedLeg]

My version of that is just a week at home catching up on my reading and day drinking. I normally do it around my birthday and have a big party as well.

I understand that, I just turn into a slob if I am at home for any period of time unsupervised! I might make grand plans, and then promptly achieve about 10%.

This

I'm alright with being a slob for a bit, I usually keep myself fairly busy so a week of sleeping late and lounging around in trackies is just the ticket sometimes .

[Broccers]

Each to their own - if you enjoy that then all good. I can't sunbathe for more than 2 hours a day without getting bored out my brain... or so drunk I fall asleep and burn to death.

[Zonda_]

I'm currently on holiday and the extent of my cooking is deciding which restaurant to eat in. We went full lazy yesterday and ordered room service, it's free so why not? As for holidays I like to be doing things I can't do at home, we swam with whale sharks 2 days ago, dolphins today and turtles in a couple of days then off to see Chichen Itza. Bloody loving it!

[Marv]

I enjoy cooking but Nef’s holiday sounds horrible, not gonna lie .

I'm not going to lie either - this one was! (Looking at the positive, I'm seeing it as an exercise in mental fortitude )

Usually its great though.
Get up in the morning, drink a coffee in the sun, chat with folks and make a rough menu plan.
Have a bit of a wander through the extensive gardens and see what fruit/veg/herbs I can find. Maybe take the kids for a bit of foraging.
Take a trip out to the local market/town to find some interesting produce.
Chat to the local suppliers (who are actually interested because you're buying more than a meal for 2).
Come home with some honking great piece of meat and start breaking it down (I very much enjoy butchery, but don't get that much chance to practice at home).
Maybe come up with some crazy idea about firing up the massive ancient rotisserie or digging a pit for a dutch oven.
Recruit a couple of the kids to help with prep, teach a few basic knife/pastry/process skills.
Set any slow bits going, and disappear for a swim/climb/trip out for a couple of hours.
Come back and start putting the rest together. Change the plan 2 or 3 times either with new ideas, or to fit with the realities of mass catering on a 2-burner/2-oven Aga.
Fire up some music in the kitchen (aggressive techno if there's a mountain of work, maybe some laid back hip-hop if its a lighter load)
Couple of beers leading up to and during service
Sit down to a meal I actually want to eat, drink nice wine (something better than I'd choose if I were just buying for myself), accept lots of appreciative praise.
Chat and socialise while others do the clean up
Do silly drunk stuff
Rinse and repeat...

I fully appreciate its a minority view on holidaying, and not trying to sell it to anyone, but as a once-a-year change of scene, and occasionally a bit of a research exercise, it suits me a treat.

That sounds much more appealing, wouldn't mind doing that one day in a holiday, but not every day!