It’s hard to imagine holidays now we’re locked in a pandemic

A carefree trip to Brazil to visit her sister helps Charlotte Cripps forget about Alex for a moment, but things take an embarrassing turn at an NA meeting in a barn in the jungle

(Amara May)

OK, it wasn’t heaven in Brazil. My dad came with his awful ex-girlfriend and they spent the whole holiday lording it up in a five-star beach villa with diarrhoea and a bidet bum gun after a severe case of food poisoning. I’m slumming it on the cheap nearby at my sisters while she’s out on the lambada circuit. It’s hot and I’m getting into the beach vibe. Everything is very slow in Bahia – the eastern coast of Brazil. They do everything tomorrow, which doesn’t suit my temperament.

It’s hard to imagine holidays now that we are all stuck at home in a coronavirus pandemic. Mind you, perhaps I won’t miss them quite as much as the idea of one. The trip through the airport itself with the two kids and my dad usually floors me before I have even boarded a plane. I have to push the luggage trolley with Lola riding on the top of it while my 87-year-old dad Brian pushes Liberty in the pram, using it like a zimmer frame. Then the holiday itself is one long slog that I need a holiday from. But back then, I left my worries at the doorstep of my new flat. I really didn’t care for a short time.

My sister Rebecca, who speaks fluent Portuguese, takes me to an NA meeting in a barn in the jungle – so she can translate what the others are saying. She’s obviously never attended one before as she starts to interrupt people mid-share to tell them it is all going to work out fine. I’m dying inside, as she sympathises with them, often getting up to hug them inappropriately. To my horror, she even picks up a white keyring at the end of the meeting for people who want to get clean (and serene), just to feel part of things.