'So you want to go home?' I asked her. She was adamant. 'No. It's really, really great being bored.'
I'd never really thought about it before, but some of our best family holidays are very, very boring. It's not that we don't do anything on them. It's that there's nothing we have to do. On Achill, there's no cinema or cultural activities of any kind. There's just outside - fields, beach, cliffs - to be clambered over, if the weather's good enough. It's completely different to our regular city family life, where even the eight-year-old twins have a calendar to mark all their appointments. Recorder club, going to tea, Brownies, school fete. No point keeping a diary on Achill. Wouldn't be anything in it.
Perhaps it's also something to do with being on an island. Some years ago, the tourist office on Norfolk Island, off the coast of Australia, dreamt up a slogan to attract visitors to its sleepy shores. The posters read - 'Norfolk Island. The Most Boring Place in the World!' Visitors numbers increased substantially. The BBC, not believing Norfolk's claim, canvassed people to see where they found most boring. Interestingly, most named places which they kept going back to.
The truth is, we all like being bored on holiday, because we're increasingly entertained at home. We want to get up late, slouch around, wonder what on earth we're going to do today. Of course, for my teenager being bored is a badge of honour. It's obligatory for someone her age. I know when she gets home she'll boast to her mates about just how boring both the place, and her parents, are.
So when we're looking for somewhere to go away, and the kids say, 'That looks so boring,' I'll save a link to the page. Nothing like having nothing to do.
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