Toby Young
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For well-to-do folk like me, it takes the form of obsessing about food. I first noticed this when I was living in New York in the mid-1990s and shared a weekend home on Shelter Island with four other Brits. On a Saturday morning the household would usually be woken at around 11a.m. by a couple of American friends who’d just done something unspeakably energetic, such as playing golf. Americans, we soon realised, like to pack their weekends with activities. For people like us, on the other hand, it was an opportunity to do nothing but sleep, eat and drink.
Admittedly, breakfast usually consisted of a cup of coffee and a cigarette, but as soon as our heads had cleared we began to make plans for lunch. Someone would be appointed ‘the grill master’, while another was dispatched to the local supermarket to buy the beef. A third person would be in charge of securing alcohol and a fourth was tasked with rustling up as many female guests as possible. As the person paying the least amount of rent, I was responsible for making the place look vaguely presentable after the revelries of the night before.
Lunch would begin at around 2 p.m. and continue until at least 5p.m. We would then turn our minds to the question of which restaurant to go to that evening. We’d usually settle on Sunset Beach, the local hotspot, where we’d pitch up at 9.30 p.m. and stay until we were kicked out at 3a.m.
I can’t pretend my week in Morocco has been anything like as decadent, but it’s still been dominated by meals: planning them, preparing them, consuming them. We’re here with another family also of four children and that may be a contributory factor. For Brits of a certain class, social life on holiday consists of eating together. Everything else comes a distant second.
I say ‘of a certain class’, but it may be true of all British people, regardless of background. My impression, though, is that food becomes less important the further you go down the totem pole. Working-class people still consume vast quantities on holiday, but don’t devote quite as much time and energy to the mealtime ritual, not least because of the expense involved. Instead, getting drunk is the key social activity. Nevertheless, holidays are an excuse for sybaritic self-indulgence no matter where we’re from — and while this is true of all northern Europeans, it’s particularly true of us.
Why should this be so? Why are we transformed into creatures of ravenous appetite the moment we set foot overseas? I think it has to do with the faintly puritanical atmosphere in the home country. We are a nation of curtain-twitchers, constantly spying on each other and ready to scowl in disapproval at the first sign of rule-breaking, whether it’s getting up late or ordering another bottle of wine after the pudding has been cleared away.
When we go abroad, the first thing we feel is the heady rush of freedom as this sense of oppression lifts. All of a sudden, the superego is silenced and the id is released from its prison. We find ourselves ordering a pint of Guinness as the ferry leaves Dover — even though it’s only ten in the morning — or buying a giant-sized bar of white Toblerone in duty-free. Soon, we’re bumping along a D road in the outskirts of Lyon, searching for a Michelin-starred restaurant, with friends following behind. We usually pay a terrible price on our return to Blighty and complain that we need another holiday to recover, but for a glorious week or two we have been free to indulge ourselves without fear of censure.
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