Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: I found the key to holiday happiness in a car park

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issue 10 August 2013

While sitting beside a pool under a blistering Tuscan sun, I’ve been reading an article in Corriere della Sera about how to make the most of a summer holiday. The paper says that it isn’t enough to do what I have been doing — sweat, swim, sweat again, swim again, and then eat and drink too much — because this leaves you feeling gloomy when the holiday is over. Strongest in your memory, it claims, will be the last few days of the holiday, which are the most depressing ones because you are starting to dread the resumption of the usual drudgery at home. The answer, it says, is for your holiday to include at least one exciting and emotional event that will stick in the mind and give you something positive to remember it by. The trouble is that when the temperature rises to 40 degrees Celsius, as it has done here, you aren’t in the mood to do anything exciting.

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