Holidaying at home

Photo by Umesh Gopinath on Unsplash

I’ve always said I’d like to have a holiday at home, frittering away my precious annual leave on a week of curling up on the sofa with a good book, pottering around the house and repotting my overgrown aloe. 

In what should have been the run up to my trip to Morocco, I debated whether to cut my losses and cancel my days off or to finally take that trip of a lifetime to my living room. I opted for the latter. 10 glorious days of uninterrupted peace in my East London flat. 

If you’re faced with an impromptu staycation too, perhaps you’ll find some ideas here. And if nothing else, another two minutes of lockdown will be over by the time you finish reading.

Food

Eating is usually a huge part of my holidays – hunting down the nearest bakery in the vicinity for my morning pastries, overindulging in pretty much any local treat (usually cheese), and getting that familiar warm feeling from the first sip of wine on a balmy evening. Oh, and I LOVE going to foreign supermarkets. 

Clearly, food had to feature heavily in my staycation. Luckily, my boyfriend Jorge and I enjoy cooking and we’re fairly good at it (if I do say so myself). We had recently bought a new cookbook called East by Meera Sodha and were keen to try out some recipes that we might previously have been too tired (lazy) to try pre-lockdown. We worked our way through the peanut butter and purple sprouting broccoli pad thai, new potato, chard and coconut curry, and – wait for it – salted miso brownies. If you’re vegetarian, vegan and/or a fan of Asian cuisines, order a copy of East and pack a suitcase for your taste buds. If you don’t fancy splashing out on a new cookbook, dig out an old one that you might have forgotten or try new recipes from different corners of the Internet. 

When it comes to lockdown date nights, I’m sure everyone has a different take. But since getting dressed up for a decadent dinner is a mainstay of most our holidays, Jorge and I decided to get the glad rags on and cook our own feast. Putting on a dress, dabbing some perfume and swiping on some lipstick is the lockdown equivalent of getting dressed up for a big night out but it felt surprisingly lovely after weeks of zero makeup and leggings. For dinner, we had pan fried salmon with asparagus and padron peppers, all washed down with some white wine. With a few candles and suitably ambient music, it was our own slice of escapism. And if you’re not the cooking type, why not order a fancy takeaway. Or if you don’t live with your partner, glam it up with your housemates or cook up a storm in the kitchen for yourself. 

Books 

Lockdown might be in full force but the good news is we can still travel, all from the comfort of our own sofa I might add. Contained within the brightly coloured paperbacks on our shelves are portals to more places than you can shake a credit card at. 

Besides, I’ve always treated holidays as a time to greedily gobble up as many books as I can fit into my suitcase. So I decided this staycation would be the perfect time to read some of the heavy, shoulder ache-inducing books that have been gathering dust on my shelf for years. First up was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Ever since I received it as a Christmas present from my mum four years ago, Anna Karenina has been judging me every time I reached for another book on the bookshelf. “Sorry Anna, you’re too big and cumbersome for me to carry around all day”, I’d protest. But with any hopes of taking a book into the outside world currently dashed, I had to push my book-sizeist prejudices aside. I’m so glad I did, by the way. It’s a work of art and I ended up loving Anna and even missing her once I’d finished the book. I truly felt like I’d travelled to Russia every time I dove back into the story, fancying myself a fully fledged member of Imperial Russian society. It’s a complex novel with an array of major characters and plenty of contextual references dotted throughout, but let’s face it, if I didn’t have time to tackle the 800-page tome now, when would I? If you’re after a gripping story of love, jealousy, betrayal and rule breaking, Anna Karenina should be top of your staycation reading list. 

The next book on my list was The Beekeeper of Aleppo, a small paperback in comparison with Anna Karenina but a Skype book club deadline was looming. Now, I understand that a trip to Aleppo isn’t on top of most people’s bucket lists, but this book is a powerful reminder of the gruelling journeys that take place around the world every day. Through the eyes of its protagonist, a Beekeeper fleeing Aleppo with his wife, the book humanises the Syrian refugee crisis and paints a vivid picture of the journey from a war-torn country to the relative safety of the UK. If you want to understand more about the people behind the headlines and take your mind on a trip outside your comfort zone, get your hands on The Beekeeper of Aleppo now. 

Games

Games are woven into the fabric of most holidays, whether it’s a sandy game of Uno on the beach, a water-splashed board game by the pool or a heated family trivia session after too many sangrias. 

Since every night of lockdown seems to be trivia night, perhaps these games won’t be new to you, but here are a couple of favourites that we played avidly during our staycation. 

The game we played most was Pandemic. We actually bought it before coronavirus madness kicked in but it’s proven to be very entertaining, probably in the same way that Contagion is currently topping the Netflix charts. But really, it's a fun game. Instead of competing against other people, you work together as a team to cure the world of four rampant viruses. If you’re ultra-competitive and don’t take losing well, perhaps this would be a good one to avoid any lockdown fallouts. 

The other games we played excessively were from the Jackbox Party Pack and I couldn’t recommend them more, particularly if you’re used to holidaying en masse with the whole gang. Although Jackbox wasn’t necessarily designed for long-distance gaming, we’ve been playing over Skype with various friends and it works a treat. There are tons of weird and wonderful games to choose from including Trivia Murder Party (an instant classic) and the Cards Against Humanity-esque Quiplash. Each pack is around £10 and includes 5 or so games, making it a relatively cheap source of sociable staycation entertainment. 

The verdict

When the 10 days were over and I was firmly ensconced back in my work routine, I found myself reminiscing about reading on the sofa in the same way I might about pottering around a new city. Was it the same as exploring the sun soaked medinas of Morocco? No, not quite. But I did get that wave of post-holiday energy and felt perhaps more rested than I would have done had I arrived home late after a long flight. I won’t be trading in my overseas adventures once normality has been restored, but I will be more mindful about how many times I travel and consider whether sometimes all I really need is a trip to the sofa with a good book.