The Laziest Holiday In The World (With Mind-Blowing Photographs)

I took a holiday this week. At home. In Dublin. It was almost entirely unplanned, in that I only decided to have a holiday last Friday, and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do any of the stuff you’re supposed to do on holidays in order to call it a holiday.

Here is a list of the stuff people do on holidays, which I did not do this week.

1. Go somewhere

2. Eat out

3. Buy souvenirs

4. Have a fight with someone dear to me

5. Clock up any experiences which would warrant a mention even if you were only mentioning them on the phone to the sort of mother who would happily listen to a rundown of your last toilet break

Here is what I did this week instead.

1. Lie down.

I did this a lot. I did it mostly indoors, on my bed, but sometimes I did it in the garden when the sun was shining. I cannot describe how nice this was. All of the lying down was fairly fantastic, if I’m honest.

2. Get better.

I had been ill, then I went back to work, and I was iller, which was so unkind. That’s the reason I took this week off. And my cunning plan worked. I cannot even describe how smug I feel right now.

3. Walk along the same route I walk into work, only when not walking to work, making it bloody lovely.

And I took this photograph of the kind of Irish graffiti which makes life worth living.

4. Get abducted by aliens.

One minute I was taking a photograph, and then…

5. Go back in time.

There is a rather splendid rose garden beside where I live. I mean beside. Right beside me. You go out my front door, then around one corner, then around another, and there it is. And I only visit it about twice a year. I know. I’m a disgrace. But I wandered in this week and lo and behold, there the prickly little blighters were, in all the 5-minute wonder of a thoroughly full bloom. I am reliably informed that they are very late this year because of the spufincular malatemporal flux [meteorological white noise], or whatever the hell it was that happened in June.

But I was standing there, looking at the roses, and I suddenly realised that I was standing in a 1960s jigsaw. Or a 1970s postcard. All jigsaws and postcards in the 1960s and 1970s had rose gardens in them. They were bloody obsessed. As soon as they got mass colour photography they lost the run of themselves with the shagging roses. But anyway, there I was. Back in time.

And so we have it. The laziest holiday in the world. Not bad for someone who didn’t go anywhere.