To book a holiday or not to book a holiday...

After last year I'm in two minds as to whether or not we should book a holiday. So far we haven't booked anything and I'm tempted to leave it until nearer the time to see what happens... Before, we always used to book well in advance to be sure of getting the pick of (reasonably cheap but luxurious) French villas in nice locations, so last year we'd booked well before we noticed that anorexia had muscled its way into our lives.


I think it was about this time last year that I emailed the villa owners to say we might need to cancel and, if so, would they be able to find replacement guests... But, by Easter, I had to make a definite decision which was really difficult as my instinct said it might be a disaster, yet I SO WANTED TO GO ON HOLIDAY!!!!

At the time I really thought that by telling Ben he'd need to get a move on with recovery or we wouldn't go to France, he'd somehow swing into action and head towards recovery at a rate of knots. But now, older and wiser, I know that could never have happened.

Going on holiday to France was really weird. To all intents and purposes we were a normal family going on a fantastic holiday. Before the anorexia, as a treat, I'd booked us into a first-class Commodore Cabin on the ferry and booked a night at a swish hotel on the way back plus another in Southampton. Also, the weather was lovely and we'd always had such fabulous holidays as a family.

But right from the start, things went wrong. On the drive to Portsmouth we stopped off for lunch at a dear little olde worlde pub with a fantastic menu. It took Ben AGES to order by which time we were predictably tense. When the food arrived, he immediately insisted on swapping his and his Dad's meal, as his fishcakes had obviously been deep fried and he couldn't handle it. So the tension mounted almost before we'd left home and his behaviour was predictably strange, should any nosy fellow diners cast a look our way...

This was followed by the familiar "pick up / put down / pick up again / put down again" routine in Tescos in Portsmouth as we attempted to buy a snack meal to eat on the ferry. The predictable mega low calorie option was eventually chosen... And, once on the ferry, Ben's mood deteriorated and we sat as miserable as sin in our luxury cabin and, later, in the bar (Ben ended up slinking off to bed early, refusing to have a drink the bar). Of course he didn't touch the free Toblerone, chocolates and biscuits...

By the time we arrived at our lovely villa with pool, sun shining, weather wonderfully warm and villa owners friendly and inviting, Ben was in a foul mood. Even before we'd unpacked he'd descended into "Ed rage" and we had a hellish screaming match which I'm sure our hosts could hear... Ed the anorexia demon at its worst... Ben ended up barricading himself in his bedroom, me in tears and his Dad ended up sobbing on a garden seat outside, threatening to go home the next day... (Ha ha ha! How many times we threatened to do that throughout the holiday...)

Then our hosts came round to formally welcome us - you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife!

So that was the start of our wonderful French holiday last summer... and, no, in general, things didn't improve as time went on and, yes, Ben did return having lost a considerable amount of weight...

Low points: on the beach when Ben's mood tended to drop to rock-bottom. In one direction was the sea - and I was seriously worried that he would get so depressed and helpless that he might "walk out to sea", not caring what happened; one day I had to swim like an Olympic swimmer to drag him back towards the shore as the anorexia "forced him" to do the crawl up and down... up and down... without caring how far out to sea he drifted. I was TERRIFIED!!! In the other direction were sand dunes with a forest behind leading to God knows where and once he paced off up there, not caring where he went, and didn't come back for AGES... So beaches were BAD NEWS... What was weird was that, all around us, life was going on as normal yet we were in this hellish kind of "capsule" of high tension, mega low moods (by now Ben was descending into what was eventually diagnosed as clinical depression) and unpredictable behaviour. (Or, rather, predictable in that you could predict it would be HELLISH.)

High points: Er, er, er.... we did some nice cycle rides. But, of course, Ed the anorexia demon loved cycle rides, especially up very steep hills... And some nice walks, which ed the anorexia demon liked, too, though not as much as the strenuous cycle rides and daily 100 lengths up and down the villa pool...

As a result, we haven't made a holiday booking for this year. It's our first year without a holiday and we used to love holidays so much...