PLANS ARE LIKE DUVETS

I like a plan.

There, I’ve said it. I like a lovely, detailed, cosy plan; the kind that you can snuggle into like a duvet; one that can warm you from the inside, in much the same way as hot porridge does on a cold day.

I like a plan that helps you focus on the next step without worrying too much about the one after. I like knowing what’s going to happen next, who’s going to do what, and where I have to be at which time. It’s a bit like firmly tying up your shoelaces - you’re set for walking, your feet won’t slip out of your boots, and best of all, you aren’t going to trip over (if you can help it). Adventure awaits.

I appreciate though, that we’re not all the same. Some people shuffle about uncomfortably at the idea of restricting themselves to a so-called ‘plan’. It seems like shackles; as though the duvet is more of a straitjacket, with awful padlocks curtailing their beautiful freedom. There’s no room for spontaneity! Where is the life? Where’s the flexibility? Get me out of here!

Somehow, we have to meet in the middle. I understand I think, that nobody wants to be controlled or shuffled around a board like a chess piece! I get that. Tyranny lies behind the ultra-organised mind.

But tyranny is also there in the free-floating world; it’s just more subtle. For example, I know someone who went on holiday with their in-laws for the first time. She almost had a meltdown because her husband’s parents ‘wasted’ most mornings, getting up late, slow-breakfasting, behaving indecisively about what to do with the day. By the time they’d settled on something it was too late to get there and enjoy it. 

She tried with some vehemence to get them to talk about the next day at the end of the previous one, but they found the whole idea of ‘planning tomorrow’ quite antithetical to the purpose of actually being on holiday, and flatly refused. Actually, I think they might have been fairly sozzled at the time.

And fair play! Holidays should be for relaxing. It just so happens that she, like me, needed that plan-duvet to feel safe and free too. So she simply couldn’t relax. And the worst kind of plan, she thought, is no plan at all.

Planning ought to be flexible then. Perhaps there should be a rough idea (no real details) of what we’re trying to achieve, and then elements can be moved around if things change. The super-planners can focus carefully on what needs to be done if they want to; the creative holidaymakers can relax into the brushstrokes?

How would it work out? I don’t know. We all have to let go of something that keeps us safe, in order to achieve a beautiful, successful time. We all have to trust each other more, and talk about things more clearly. We have to find a way to listen and love each other better.

To be honest, whether sozzled or not, I think I would have made my own plan on that holiday and got up early(ish) and then would have got on with it. I’d have suggested booking dinner tables in advance and offered to take all the admin out of it so that my fellow holidaymakers would just have the barest minimum of a plan - when, and where, for what.

What I wouldn’t do is google the menu beforehand. See! There is some creative spontaneity left in me!