This week I was asked by another journalist to contribute a couple of lines to a feature she was writing about holiday packing, and I responded potentially excessively with what was tantamount to an essay. Packing, evidently, has become my specialist subject. It is also a process which brings order and goodness to my life. I know lots of people dread the packing and see it as a chore. But I live to pack (at least for myself).
Part of my affinity for packing is that I have been doing it my whole life. With parents living in separate countries, I was a frequent flier as an unaccompanied minor back when they let children fly unchaperoned. My parents split for good when I was six and after that I crisscrossed Europe between England and Germany before my mum moved to South Africa. From that moment, my life became locused in the lesser-known travel triangle of Edinburgh, Cape Town and Munich. Home, they say, is where the heart is and I have always had to pack to reach that beating bosom.
I treat holidays as escapism and dress accordingly while I’m away. While my workaday life may involve picking a five-year-old up from a micro scooter fall then realising he has transferred actual dogshit on to my Sézane blouse (true story from Thursday), on holiday, I am a Slim Aarons glamazon, all cabana dresses and gobstopper jewels, subtly revealed at the edge of my vintage Hermes scarves. I’m Zelda Fitzgerald or Talitha Getty, storied, impossibly glamorous, iconic. Well, at least I am inside my head.
Stepping into this double life requires some serious sartorial preparation which is why my approach to packing can read so messianic. I’m here for the fantasy, the flamboyance and yes, the photos too. My grandad used to gather the whole family to watch slideshows of his holidays with my nan to destinations ranging from Dungeness (before the architecture) to St Austell, lining up literally hundreds of 35mm film transparencies in his carousel projector. Those teatime shows were a family affair - everyone was involved (no matter how bored they might be after tray three) in the vacation magic and we celebrated the record of experience.
“Home, they say, is where the heart is and I have always had to pack to reach that beating bosom.”
So yes, I pack for holiday photos, because I love looking back at them and reminding myself of the specific moments of magic, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When I’m away I get to inhabit a different version of myself, the kind of woman who I usually have to stuff into a compartmentalised box during my real life because she is much too glam to cope with a school run. Obviously, that woman is *slightly* less liberated if my children are actually with me on my hols, but I can segue my imagination pretty quickly from perma-tanned jetsetter to say, a bohemian, wildflower farmer raising children in rural France. Or else a beachfront restaurant owner bringing up her family on an Italian island. You can see where I’m going here – and yes, I probably should stop daydreaming and get on with being a 42-year-old author and mother of two from West London. But life is too short to forget about make believe.
With all this said, let’s get down to brass tacks: what does all this role play/fancy dress business look like IRL? How does it help with packing?
Read on for my top 11 tips for packing for the fantasy…
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