Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

with my credit card, decided to book the trip to Rome. Shunning Ryanair (it doesn’t really set the right tone for a romantic weekend away), I found some not-too-exorbitant tickets on Alitalia and a special three-night deal at the Hotel de Russie which I’d only be paying off for a couple of months. Maybe three.
    Just as I clicked on ‘confirm’ to purchase the tickets, my mobile rang. Snatching it up in eager anticipation of seeing Dan’s name come up on the screen, I was mightily disappointed to discover that it was Celia, my older sister. I toyed with the idea of ignoring her, but as usual, my guilt got the better of me.
    ‘Hi, Cee,’ I said, with as much cheeriness as I could muster. ‘How’s it going?’
    ‘Why aren’t you coming up this weekend?’ shesnapped, immediately on the offensive. Despite its suddenness, this attack was not entirely unexpected. The coming weekend was my parents’ twenty-eighth wedding anniversary, and my sister had been planning the party for months.
    ‘Celia, I told you I can’t come this weekend, I’ve got plans I made ages ago and I can’t change them now.’ This was not entirely true. I did have plans to spend the weekend with Dan – he’d been away on two stag trips and one weekend training session in the past four weeks and I felt as though I’d barely seen him. ‘In any case, Cee, it’s not like it’s their thirtieth. Twenty-eight isn’t really a big deal, is it? Bet you don’t even know what gift you’re supposed to give for twenty-eight years.’
    ‘I’ve looked it up. There isn’t one.’
    ‘There you go then.’
    ‘For Christ’s sake, Cassandra,’ she said, knowing only too well that the use of my full name sets my teeth on edge, ‘it is a big deal. It’s twenty-eight years of marriage. And I’ve booked the function room at the Holiday Inn in Corby! You can’t do this to them, they’ll be heartbroken . Particularly after what happened at Dad’s birthday.’
    My sister knows exactly how to push my buttons. Bringing up Dad’s birthday debacle was a masterstroke.
    It happened a couple of months ago. My father had a birthday barbeque in the summer, to which Dan was invited.
    ‘We’re ever so keen to meet him, love,’ my mother had said on the phone. ‘You’ve been seeing this chap for months now. About time he and your father got acquainted, isn’t it?’
    Not in my opinion it wasn’t. If it were up to me, Dan and my parents would never cross paths. Here is the awful truth – and it is really awful – I’m embarrassed by my family. I know that everyone goes through a stage when the idea of bumping into their friends when in the company of their parents is the very definition of hell, but you’re supposed to grow out of that stage when you’re about seventeen. I never did. And I don’t know which is worse: the embarrassment they cause me or the burning shame I feel because I am embarrassed by them.
    My parents are not unpleasant people. They are kind and respectable, active members of the Kettering Rotary Club and their local Conservative Party. But they are unworldly. They live in a Britain which most of us left behind a long time ago, the Britain of the 1970s, the Britain of avocado bathroom suites, prawn cocktail starters and mushroom vol-au-vents, the Britain in which holidaying in Spain was seen as exotic and adventurous.
    The Cavanagh family didn’t even get as far as Spain, in fact. When I was a child we stayed at the same bed and breakfast in Bournemouth every single summer with one exception. When I was fourteen I persuaded them to take us to France, on the pretext that it would be a good opportunity for Celia and me to practise ourFrench. We drove to Portsmouth and took the ferry to Le Havre (my mother and sister spent the entire four-hour journey throwing up in the toilets), and from there to a place called Granville, where we stayed in a tiny two-bedroom apartment with a view across the bay towards Saint-Malo.
    On our second evening in Granville, we ventured out to dinner in a picture-perfect little brasserie near the harbour, complete with blood-red awning outside and a long, copper-topped bar. I vividly remember my parents’ terrified expressions as the stereotypically snooty waiter presented them with menus written entirely in French ; Celia and I did our best to translate but we were not exactly what you might term proficient. We did, however, recognise the odd word – agneau and côte de boeuf stood out –