Shove this up your Insta, influencer types: I’m drinking piña colada from a plastic glass, in a TK Maxx Hawaiian shirt, while an MC with a moustache that can’t be ironic because it comes with a matching mullet introduces this evening’s “enerdainmen, laydeez n gennermen” — a Bob Marley tribute act with fake dreadlocks sewn into his rasta hat.
Not quite feeling the Fomo? Then you don’t know the joy of naff. Because sometimes — let’s say once a year, or twice if no one’s looking — you just need a holiday from your normal holidays.
Instead of deploying your usual discerning and discriminating good taste, you want to embrace the basic, the tacky and the obvious. To holiday — not travel, holiday — in a way that’s actually, y’know, fun. Buffet nite, coach tours, DJ Cheesy with his set list of Sabrina, Whigfield and Vengaboys — like a bottle of lurid local liqueur, it all tastes terrible back home but hits the spot hard when you’re on holiday and you know no one’s judging you (bar an actual judge, if you go a bit too far).
Don’t believe me? Try it. Leave the hip-hotel, sexy-city-break set to their uncomfortably angular furniture and overpriced bars; let the authentic-experience, live-like-the-locals, too-good-for-guidebooks brigade hoover up all the inedible offal street food and wonky handicrafts. Hop, instead, on the first charter flight out of Luton (don’t forget your inflatable lilo with the little holder for your rum punch) and try the road more travelled.
And where can you find this chic-free Shangri-la? Well, the particular crime-against-cool described above is played out at an all-inclusive resort in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. But the great beauty of the naff holiday is that it can happen anywhere — in fact, the closer to home the better.
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One of the things that’s so liberating about a holiday in “Naffville” (not to be confused with Nashville, though then again . . . ) is that there’s no pressure. Relieved of the need to find the newest and coolest and, indeed, the need to pretend you’re enjoying it — you can get down to the serious business of not taking things too seriously. And that’s even easier when you know you haven’t just spent eight hours and the annual salary of your resort’s aqua-aerobics instructor to fly there.
A Butlin’s in Bognor, a mid-priced golf-and-spa resort in Kettering, a hotel literally anywhere in Britain where they still think it’s the height of playful sophistication to serve the chips that accompany your £14 burger in a mini fryer-basket or sheet of ersatz newspaper: these are the places where, with your expectations set firmly to “modest”, you can find you spend the whole weekend eyes wide with wonder at just how relaxing your break is for a change.
● Our tacky tourist guilty pleasures
Stop rolling your eyes at the masseuse who calls the dressing gown a “robe” because she’s heard them say that on the telly in White Lotus. Accept the “welcome glass of fizz” even though you strongly suspect it’s just spumante with an inexplicable raspberry for a garnish. Resist asking the waiter about the provenance of the frutti di mare when you know perfectly well the closest it’s been to Italy is sitting next to the Goodfella’s pizzas in the freezer at Iceland, because I don’t want to get all “mindful gratitude diary” on you here (not when the area that hotel staff have proudly pointed out to you as their “wellbeing and mindfulness garden” also seems to be where the chef nips out for a fag and to argue with his girlfriend on the mobile).
Once you start appreciating the little things on your naff break, then you’re ready. Lie back on that plastic lounger, let its strange sucking sensation on your bare skin take you back, in Pavlov’s dog fashion, to the carefree holidays of your childhood, and give in to that same feeling of total, uncool relaxation.
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A small amount of packing and preparation is necessary. Laydeez, do not expect to find luxury hair straighteners in the bathroom cabinet. Gennermen, a pair of slacks, please, for the restaurant that thinks not allowing jeans makes it “classy”. But then just open your mind, close your social media accounts, set the sat-naff and drive . . .
Have you discovered the joys of an uncool getaway? Or should naff holidays naff off? Let us know in the comments below.
