Planning holidays when you or your fellow travellers have HIV can be fraught with
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The older you get, the more you realise that life is a series of myths
spliced into one continuous reel. We are expected to agree without a murmur
that Osama bin Laden is more evil than George Bush, Christmas is the best
day of the year because you spend it watching Only Fools And Horses, Peter
Stringfellow is an unstoppable sex machine and Nanette Newman does her
own washing up.
And right at the top, nestling between "everyone loved the Queen
Mother" and "Spike Milligan was a funny comedian", is the
notion that "holidays are great for shrugging off life's stresses
and strains".
Don't get me wrong. There are worse things than sipping gin and tonic
beside a pool or dozing off on a palm-fronded beach. The problem is getting
there.
Months of agonising over where to go and who to go with; stressing over
whether you can match the only available cheap flight to the only available
cheap week; sorting out cover at the office or doing all the work before
you go; taking the dog/cat/python to a kennel/cattery/someone you don't
like; realising that you are going to miss the Eurovision Song Contest
again; and to cap it all finding that you have broken your
cast-iron rule and booked a flight on "TINFLIGHTS INC", the carrier from hell. But most of us won't be told, and we insist on doing it.
