Planning a Holiday with Your Man? Read This First

I live with an Alpha male. Not the king of the jungle type; the quieter but no less ambitious animal, who, when faced with the prospect of a family holiday, goes into over-drive fearing the collapse of the western world’s economy if he spends a few days in the sun drinking margaritas.

I put it down to his early Protestant upbringing—too much of a good thing being bad for you and enjoyment of any kind frowned upon and unmerited. Because of this, plus his tendency to draw on his adrenalin reserves, sucking them dry just before we leave, he has, in the past, come down with any bug within a 1,000-kilometer radius. If someone sneezed in Stockholm, he was doomed to spend his holiday lying in a hotel room or inert on a sunbed. Polling my women friends, I hear it is a common syndrome among men. I had to come up with a plan: change husbands or resign never to go on holiday with him again. Read on to find out how I did it.

The Riot Act
Once my husband and I went to an Ashram and, on day two, following a week of adrenalin burning late nights in the office, he bent down to tie his shoelaces and stayed there. Thus began my role of fetch/carrier, food bearer, and sole babysitter to our three-year-old daughter for the remaining twelve days. Paradise Island will always remain in my mind as a Dante’s Inferno—the sound of waves crashing the shore makes me sick with exhaustion.

So I started to read the Riot Act, loudly but obviously not loud enough, as the next holiday disaster struck mid-flight before we had even got a whiff of bougainvillea. I noticed that he was visiting the bathroom on more occasions than a transatlantic flight warranted, but I started to get really worried when he began walking strangely, then hobbled John Wayne-style off the plane, but I was damned if I was going to ask him about it. We found the hired car, negotiated the alien highway system, and made it to the house we were house-swapping with (concrete, steel and glass with infinity pool set in hills outside San Francisco, yipppeee) before he timidly told me, sweat shining on his brow, that his testicle was the size of a grapefruit. 

The Three Day Plan
It turned out to be nothing that a short bed rest and strong antibiotics couldn’t cure, but obviously the riot act wasn’t working—I needed more than a potential riot to scare this man into changing his ways. So I came up with The Three Day Plan. Three days before departure, he cancels all meetings and works solely from home. Two days before, he only takes social calls and, on the third day, he actually switches off his computer—always tricky; this one as this is akin to shutting off a lung. This way he does not start the holiday like some demented, wound-up Duracell Bunny waiting to crash.

So I have spent the weekend alternatively packing, eating, and drinking wine. My man, already in holiday mood, has twice cooked me dinner: Baudroie with white asparagus and hollandaise, and Moules Marinière with linguine (he’s Swiss; he can cook). I can already taste the watermelon margaritas … vive les vacances!