Lauren Tabbron shares her favourite things to do in Manchester
Jess Astbury regales tales of festivities in warmer climates.
The first holiday with your friends, away from your parents, is probably the first time you’ll experience true freedom. If you couldn’t wait for your holiday, your parents will have almost certainly been a little more apprehensive. As the BBC’s TV show Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents shows, parents can go to extraordinary lengths to reassure themselves that their precious darlings won’t come to any harm away from parental supervision. But are parents’ worries justified? Does our holiday behaviour highlight a troubling lack of common sense on our part? In a series of articles for the Yorker, students will regale us with the stories from their first holiday with friends and explain how they think their parents would feel had they known exactly what had gone on during the holiday.
After escaping the shackles of final exams, five friends and I had planned to spend three weeks inter-railing. As often happens though, plans became increasingly complicated and people dropped out. After much debate, two friends and I decided to just head to Amsterdam for a few days of debauchery. Whilst Amsterdam may not be as tacky a destination as Magaluf (which was to be my second holiday with friends - well, you only live once!), our parents developed a barely-voiced fear that we would indulge in space cakes and wander into a canal. A short chat with my parents about how disappointed they’d be in me if I did try weed however, coupled with the sensible attitude of my medic-to-be friend, meant fear number one was alleviated: no weed.
We did want to indulge in something though, and that was alcohol. Our two nights in Amsterdam consisted of drinking and clubbing. Having said that, the three of us always stayed together and weren’t so drunk we couldn’t stand. The most fun we had was probably when meeting other people staying in our hostel and hearing stories from their travels. Daytime in Amsterdam was tamer still. We spent our time walking round the city (including looking in lots of sex shops - we had never ventured in one before and felt it was about time!), eating or napping to recover from the previous night.
None of these activities strike me as being particularly scandalous and I’m sure my parents would feel the same way. Nursing a debilitating hangover, I was happy to go home and share my holiday stories with my family. However, had my parents decided to spy on me whilst I was on holiday, I don’t think I would have been tolerant of their decision. I knew I was able to look after myself and like to think they knew me and trusted me well enough to let me get on with things in my own way. Furthermore, who really wants their parents to see them talking nonsensically about whether a fourth Jaegerbomb would be better than a third shot of whisky?
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