Fiona McCade: Staycations take hassle out of hols

Published on Monday 13 April 2009 20:21

I'VE often wondered how on Earth Silvio Berlusconi keeps being elected Prime Minister of Italy. A pizza would do a better job. Take his unique reaction to last week's terrible earthquake which left close to 300 people dead and 20,000 huddled in tents within sight of the wreckage of their homes. He said of the refugees: "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping."

This remark was typical of the caring, sensitive billionaire who has never previously shown any enthusiasm for camping, or indeed for much except a life of luxury, but thankfully he stopped short of using the latest buzzword and commenting that the dislocated and bereaved were having a "staycation".

Get used to that word, because you're going to be hearing it a lot this year. According to a rash of tourism polls, 60 per cent of Britons are spending the Easter break in their own homes, while 38 per cent of us won't be going away at all in 2009 and intend to spend all our annual leave in our own back yard.

Most Britons will be staycationing because of the credit crunch, but others, like the philosopher Alain de Botton, simply prefer the delights of home. De Botton hasn't taken a holiday for two years and is so evangelistic about the benefits of staying put, he's marketing a Holiday At Home box, containing things like postcards, fake tan and even instructions for how to enjoy yourself.

His instructions for "flying First Class" include putting a comfy armchair next to a wall, near a television and then imagining "you have paid 5,000 to be sitting in the seat".

I remember Penelope Keith's character in To The Manor Born doing something similar a couple of decades ago. Faced with the ignominy of being unable to afford a holiday, she hid in her house, rented a sunbed and pretended she'd been somewhere glamorous. I'm not that desperate – and Nicole Kidman tans better than I do – but knowing that I'd be spending the entire Easter holidays at home, I decided to take a leaf out of Alain de Botton's book and look at my less-than-glamorous situation with new eyes.

After all, at the risk of sounding like the prime minister of Italy, there's so much to be grateful for, isn't there? Staying at home eliminates all the hassle of travelling – especially with a small child in tow – and maybe the accommodation isn't particularly luxurious, but at least it's reliable. There's no double booking, or unexpected brushes with the Club 18-30 crowd. And you can rediscover the beauties of your local area. How delightful. How charming. How cheap.

On paper, staycationing looked like it might be quite good fun, so I started out by trying de Botton's First Class experience. I sat by the window in the squashiest chair I could find, remote control at the ready, sat back and… realised the flaw in the plan: when you've paid 5,000 for a plane seat, you don't keep having to get up to serve yourself drinks.

To avoid continually playing stewardess as well as traveller, you have to bring the bottle to the seat, and suddenly, instead of being a sophisticated jet-setter, you're a sad-sack who's cracked open the cava way too early. Nor does flying First Class usually involve sharing your seat with a bouncing three-year-old who wants to know why you're just sitting there, idly boozing the afternoon away, when you should be playing dinosaurs with him.

To make my staycation into a real vacation, I analysed in detail what I do on holiday that I don't do in my everyday life and the answer came back: I go and see stuff I've not seen before.

Having seen most of Edinburgh at least twice, I ended up looking behind my fridge. It's definitely somewhere I've never seen before, but it wasn't quite up there with Machu Picchu or the Taj Mahal.

I suppose one way to successfully staycation would be to swap houses with a friend, so at least you can wake up somewhere different – but you still have to do the washing up and make the beds, after which it's slippery slope to checking e-mails and keeping up with Neighbours.

Being positive, you might say that since there was hardly any difference between my ordinary life and my staycation, it must mean that every day is a holiday for me.

Being negative, all it made me want to do was jump on the next flight somewhere sunny. I wonder if Silvio Berlusconi would fancy doing a house-swap?