Short Story

A Lonely Endeavour

Being alone isn’t a very pleasent experience. Especially being alone in a foreign country.

That was the prospect of my two week holiday.

If counting my parents as people to go out with and get drunk with, then I wasn’t really alone, but that thought doesn’t really excite me a great deal more than being really alone.

We were going on holiday to France for two weeks, where we had been for the previous six or seven years (the only difference was: in the previous six or seven years I was in the company of my elder brother, Howard).

Howard and I when we were younger, but he grew up sooner than I did, being two years older, and there was a noticeable change in him and so we drifted apart. This made the holidays difficult as he would always want to get his own way, for example; his choice of bed in the hotel room, what TV channel we watched. And so there were often fights. But despite the fights, I knew I would miss him and would feel lonely.

This year I was on my own though; and to try to combat the problem, my parents decided we would have a weeks break in Centre Parcs in the middle of the holiday in the hope that I would meet some people my age. The week split either side was to be spent trapsing around towns, supermarkets (or rather ‘Hypermarchés’) and anything else deemed as being interesting or fun — from my parents perspective.

We arrived in France on Wednesday and spent a night and day in two different towns. The first was Rouen — which is a beautiful old city — and the second we decided would be Orleans, because it is the closest city to Centre Parcs. The first two days weren’t as bad as I was expecting them to be. My parents dragged me along with them to Rouen’s famous Cathedral, but in return I got to spend an hour or two at the arcades.

We got to Centre Parcs at about 1:30pm, so we had plenty of time to look around the place; hire bikes, book dinner, etc. before we could pick up the keys to the villa. I also took the opportunity to look around the car park to see how many Brit’s there were(!) — not many — I only counted eight or nine out of how ever many hundreds of cars there were. The prospect of a week in Centre Parcs was looking more and more grim.

We put the lack of British cars down to the fact that it was still school term time back home [I had done my GCSE’s this year, thus finished for the Summer holiday’s early]. This meant anyone my age and British there had to be in my situation, or from private school. [Of course they could have been infants, or even children still at school taken out of term time for a holiday.]

I didn’t think there would be many people like me, who had done their GCSE’s, as broadly, most people have a younger brother or sister that would prevent the family going away together, as the younger child would still be in term time.

The night of our arrival we went for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the ‘Dome’ (this is where all the restaurants, shops, main entertainment and the swimming pool is — everything else is spread out across the park) which I called “the pizza place”. While I like Italian food, I don’t like a wide variety, just the ordinary meals like pizza, Lasagne, pasta. This made eating there difficult as everything seemed to have additives I don’t like in it — like the pasta had a weird source with it… I’m a very fussy eater if you hadn’t gathered that already!

So anyway, as a result of my dislike of most foods, it rather restricted my menu selection. So much so that I had a main meal for starter and then another for the main course. By the end of the evening I was always rather full!

There were lots of people there, and I spent time trying to listen out for English speaking people, but I couldn’t hear any. I saw some people my age wearing England tops, so I had optimism for them being British. They weren’t though — they were French! You had to wonder why they were wearing England tops when France had recently won the world cup and the european cup two years ago!

We had picked up leaflets of activities and timetables of events from the ‘Dome’ so we had some idea of what was on, when and where. There was all sorts on; table tennis tournaments, football, hockey, absailing and social activites like discos and karaoke.

After dinner I went to the sports centre which also played host to the discos and karaoke. The karaoke had just finished [I’d arrived in time to hear the last singer though… some Frenchman spoiling an English classic, not knowing what the meaning is, just how it should sound.] and the DJ started playing some kind of rock to my disapointment. I didn’t stay for long, not because of the music so much as I was tired and it was rather empty, being the first day. I had a beer and left.

On Saturday I had a long lie-in — I figured if I stayed in bed for as long as I could, when I surfaced, there wouldn’t be so much day left to be bored (the night was okay — there was the meal and disco to occupy myself with). We were staying in a VIP villa, and one of the perks was having an Austrian or Hungarian sauna (they called it a bath, but it’s really a sauna) so I spent 30 minutes in there before finally getting dressed at about one o‘clock. Once up, I just layed on my bed reading Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, which I got into instantly, and read that for most of the remaining afternoon.

I really enjoy biking — biking fast — it gives me a rush; to zoom around, leaning and skiding round corners. With the hire bike I spent most of the afternoons just biking round and round the park, looking out for English people. It was difficult to get bored doing that — with so many different routes one could take, and views to see, this was bike riding at its scenic best.

One day while I was biking around I noticed a slight pathway through the bushes by the river. It was really tight, twisty and hilly but quick and flowing at the same time. If you were brave enough!

The entrance was just after a pedestrian bridge and came out just before a road bridge, so there were always people there to watch. I made a point of going down there twice a day — once in the darkness of the night and once in the day time.

The day was a great time to bike down there as you could take in all the scenery but at the same time have quite a thrill, but the night time was just plain nerve-racking! The bike lights only lit up a metre or two in front of me, and with all the twists and crevases, it was near impossible to anticipate the terrain ahead. You really needed good reactions; especially when a mistake would lead you to an aquaintance with the river alongside!

Saturday night I gave the disco a try again. It was busier and playing better music (though still not quite to my taste), so I had a dance, but most of the evening was spent sat down at a table by the bar drinking beer and smoking cigarettes on my own.

I noticed someone else on their own, asked if he was French and he wasn’t (well he was half French and half British, but spoke with a perfect English accent). I challenged him to a game of pool, which he accepted. I lost. So, I sat back down by the bar, but this time slightly closer to the disco, nearer to the action.

By the end of the evening I was sloshed and was thankful we were staying in a VIP villa, as another perk was that it was situated within a few hundred metres of the dome and other main attractions (including the sports centre where I was at). With memories still fresh in my mind from a few year’s ago — biking back from that same disco, drunk, I crashed into a ditch that ran along the side of the road — I was glad to not have far to go.

By the end of the week I had a routine: lie-in, shower, read, bike about, disco, sleep and fit in food and drink in between of course. It was quite a dull week at Centre Parcs really, but for going bowling with my parents a few times (which I surprisingly won, as I hadn’t played for years) and mini-golf, which, I wasn’t quite so successful at (my performance was dismal to be honest — I lost even to my Mum!).

Friday meant it wasn’t too long before we were going back to England — home. Just a few more days of shopping were left.

Not only did I have home to look forward to, but also shopping in Cité de Europe, just outside Calais. It’s a huge shopping complex, with all kinds of shops, large and small — like Lakeside in the UK, but bigger. It’s even got it’s own Hypermarché in it, as well as a Tesco’s dedicated solely to alcohol!

More than once my parents asked me why I wasn’t having a good time. “On a break from England surely anyone would be!” Why? Because I don’t like going on holiday — not alone anyway. I’d rather stay home with people I know and can go out with.

I can have all the fun in the world at home, in England.