Why Not Review: The Concept of Holidays

SOPHIE BAUER has no need to remember to wear sunscreen in a suburban summer.

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Having pulled the iron shutter down on another day, I logged into my computer and enviously absorbed Tab writers’ summer musings.

Their exuberant tales of backpacking and sun drenched train hopping brought out the squirrel-lusting Veruca Salt in me. Summer…I sighed: without a doubt a most heavenly time to be a student.  Far away from the pounding deadlines and aching pressure, we are left free to frolic in the throes of passionate romance, to trek through the jungles of Borneo or eat our pasta al bloody dente al sodding fresco beneath the Tuscan sun.

My summer may appear distinctly beige in comparison to the experiences of my peers; I did not spend it scattered all over the globe but dotted around call centres and sandwich bars earning a living like. Three glorious months of having threatening phonetic alphabets hissed into my ear and of tenderly putting together Darren’s chicken tikka baguette extravaganza.

This probably won’t encourage you to cast away your three month inter-railing tickets or your £2,000 volunteering posts in Tanzania…I may not have singlehandedly built an African orphanage but my summer has been touchingly life altering and an adventure nonetheless. Would I have swapped my mini scale adventures for those of some of my fellow students? Sometimes when people ring up, proceed to call you a bitch and say you’ve ruined their life I must admit I checked to see if Easyjet flew to the Andes yet…but as I look back on a summer filled with greasy men asking me to butter their baguettes and smatterings of exhausted Vauxhall Vectras, I can clearly see that it was a time filled to the brim with some of the greatest moments.

Summer is a time that simply comes down to making every day and penny count. Although I didn’t make it to the Andes there is no doubt that this kind of work throws people together and friendships are formed faster than in the mad orgy of handshakes that is Cambridge Freshers’ week.  I had never been so determined to make a mark in the mass of time stretching out like a yawn: Amongst other places I made it to Paris, Madrid, Strasbourg, Lisbon and Wales (naturally). The knowledge that I had firmly footed the bill made time away from the buffets and ketchup toasties all the tastier.

A whale in Skegness

A memorable and life altering summer isn’t just for the wealthy and well connected. As I reached for my headset on another shift at the office and awaited the first ear-ringing phone call of the day I came to the conclusion that you don’t need to spend a zillion to make the summer matter. You don’t need to go to Thailand to find yourself or to a tailor-made meditation class in Vietnam to meet like minded people. Despite starting my three months of work coveting my friends’ plane tickets, I soon came out the other side having met some wonderful people and weighed down with a healthy dollop of stories to tell nonetheless. These long summer months will inevitably have an impact on each of us; whether we were snuggling up with indigenous tribes in Peru, working in McDonalds or the highlight were those few days at Glastonbury. So, don’t envy your friend’s squirrel, let us recite together…A for alpha, B for bravo, C for Charlie…