The Midults’ guide to...

Holiday meltdown

The Canadian lakes

You’ve been going for years, ig noring the raised eyebrows from all the people who t hought it was so dull a nd just made ‘a roond a nd aboot’ jokes. ‘Not exactly rock’n’roll,’ they’d say. Ha. Now you find you are bedded into the coolest spot on ear th. ‘Did you meet Justin?’ they’ll ask. ‘Can we come with you next year?’ Who knew you were a trendsetter? You certainly didn’t.

Caravanning in north Wales

You are always the right side of vintage, a little bit grubby and yet interesting. You can whip up a Masterchef meal on a single-burner thingy and have never eaten a packet of digestives for dinner. There are always duck feathers in your hair from all that wild swimming. In fact you are a bit damp all the time, but you quite enjoy the chafing. Caravans are like Viagra for you–you’ ll return exhausted and possibly pregnant. Again. You may call the child Kestrel.

los angeles

Time to just hang out and pretend this is your life. Hire a bit of a cool car. Juice a lot on Venice Beach. Allow your inflect ion to r ise gent ly at t he end of sentences, as in, ‘I just really feel myself here?’ Go for hikes (walks) in the Hollywood Hills and faintly wonder if you’ll be discovered and have to relocate to Califor nia to f ulf il your dest iny. You wear athleisure all day (‘Everyone in LA is half on holiday and half exercising at all times?’) and return with dodgy filmindustry gossip you’ve got from waiters. You feel fat the whole time.

home

‘Travelling in August is just screaming kids and inflated prices,’ you say. ‘It’s so peaceful at home.’ You find you have to hold your nerve with this one, part icula rly when browsing Inst ag ra m (#blessed) in the Tesco checkout queue. You veer wildly between smug and sorrowful and take up some kind of craft (needlepoint, perhaps potter y) or DIY (gardening, painting, filling the freezer for aut umn) to feel you’ve achieved something at the end of the day. You have an ambitious reading list but in the end just reread Riders and The Da

Vinci Code. You are in two minds about the success of your staycation but you do not admit this.

The south of france

You are violently retro. But not too retro to go inland to a charming village with a market and no breeze and ter r ible mosquitoes and a villa with damp and v icious loca ls a nd blocked loos. You decide to base your novel on this trip to make yourself feel better and fling open your laptop, but only get as far as emailing a divorce lawyer.

Cornwall

You’ve been going to Rock/padstow/st Ives for, like, ever. You swear blind that it only takes t hree hours and you’ve never been stuck in a traffic jam on the A 303 for a whole day. You barbecue your own lobster (or your nanny does) and you have one of t hose towelling one si es for grown-ups. You once worked the season and slept with a different surfer/au pair every night. ‘Good times,’ you say mistily over a lager top. You are now a banker.

an off-season ski resort

Is there anything more liberating than climbing a mountain? You often have the urge to run through the wild-flower meadows but you don’t because your backpack is a bit heavy and these walking boots are quite hot. You love Angela Merkel (‘So strong and stable’). You iron your tea towels and if someone opened your k itchen cupboa rds t hey would star t backing out of the house slowly, making no sudden movements. You flirt with the idea of buying a dirndl or lederhosen. Just in case.

a swedish island

You want to be clean. You want to eat f ish and loads of foraged t hings. You want to be pure and forget about the elect ion and Nor t h Korea and house prices and all the bad sex you’ve had in your life. So much bad sex. How much bad sex is too much bad sex? So this year you’ve hired a cabin on a remote Swedish island and you are going to be at one with nature. With big nature. Dramatic la ndscapes to help you forget a ll t he drama. You will not spend the whole two weeks crying. themidult.com