How chic is your summer?

Travelling in Europe over the coming months? Then you're going to need more than a pair of white jeans and a stash of Breton tops to stand out

My husband and I are currently on a road trip across Europe. We have the two dogs with us, because well, that is what mad dog people do. They go to nice hotels and ruin the peace and softly atomised rooms with wet, over-excited dogs. As I write this, we are in a beautiful hotel in the Champagne region. There are Eames chairs, hot towels on arrival and French women who glide around with Celine bags and death stares. This morning, one such women caught me in the garden at 6 am with a Sainsbury’s carrier bag, decanting my dog’s effluence into it. (Because of course, I had forgotten the far more discreet forest-green poo bags we had bought specially). Never had I felt more British in my life.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel this way when I leave Britain behind and enter the European summer. There is something about a European summer that makes me feel 65 per cent dumpier, ashier, and more awkward than normal. I blame the ‘summer people’- that weird, inexplicable tribe of individuals who appear, as if from nowhere, between the months of June to September across Europe. I don’t know what nationality they are- Czech, Italian, French? Who knows? All I know is the men are at least four inches taller than ours and all appear to have kept their hair. The women meanwhile take tiny sips of their wine, have wardrobes that always look freshly laundered, and never appear to sweat. The more I think about it, the more I genuinely believe these people are put on earth specifically to ruin British people’s holidays.

This is not a new thing, by the way. It has always been thus. When I was young and could wear those bikinis made out of scraps of old Liberty handkerchiefs, I would always look around the beach and see Italian girls with breasts like Werther’s Originals and think: How is that even possible? They were breasts that somehow managed to tread the line between being gloriously tomboyish whilst also deeply sexy. I believe the French call this coquettish. It’s a sort of flirty sexiness that is one part mystery, two parts innocence and five parts pure filth. I have always longed to be called coquettish. The closet I have ever got was ‘sullen’.

The ‘summer people’ are able to wear white jeans and not have a single stain by 6 pm. They have feet and toenails that are serviced year-round by a medical practioner, as opposed to those of us who cram in a last minute pedicure with a poor, overworked Vietnamese woman who can do two sets of gel nails within the hour but can’t rescue feet that look like a loofah. You want to ask this ‘summer woman’ what colour she has on her toes (Essie Sugar Daddy, perhaps?), for it is a perfect pink; pink the colour of a Kentish dawn- and then you realise, oh wait, that is her actual toe nail colour. 

They tan perfectly too. Not too much, but just enough- Cinnamon on the Edward Bulmer paint chart, say. When I hit the sun I go from B&Q  Mustard matt emulsion to Tetley’s Strong Brew exterior gloss within a few days.

My husband and I had a classic ‘summer people’ experience just last night. We had booked dinner for 7.30 pm in the hotel in which we are staying. But of course, no one eats dinner at 7.30pm in Europe, unless you are 6 years old and need to be in bed by 9.45 pm. (Which, to be fair, is my preferred bedtime). So we were offered an aperitif in the garden. ‘Oh no,’ we said shaking our heads over-confidently. ‘No pre-dinner drinks needed for us, thank you.’ There’s something about the phrase ‘pre-dinner drinks’ that has always set my husband and I on edge. I think it’s down to a traumatic experience at an Australian ‘homestead’ we wound up at by accident one holiday many years ago. It was essentially a business built around one man’s ego, which required all guests to ‘mingle’ with the proprietor over pre-dinner drinks then ended with an enforced ‘story time’ digestif, which basically involved us all sitting round the table whilst he shared a bunch of made-up ghost stories. 

So anyway, we told the waitress we’d just go straight to the table, at which point she gave us that look that only wait staff in very posh restaurants can do, where they raise their eyebrows whilst simultaneously lowering the corners of their lips and look at you with a mixture of pity, hate and incomprehension. Which of course, she was right to do since once we’d made the five minute journey to the restaurant upstairs, we were met with a vast room, empty, except for a line of teenage waiters scratching their scrotums. I looked at my husband. My husband looked at me. The waitress looked at both of us and then at the line of waiters, who all smirked in unison.

‘Actually, maybe a pre-dinner drink would be a good idea,’ we said, trying to make it sound like a casual about turn. We then scurried into the garden where the ‘summer people’ were sipping glasses of Laurent Perrier and nibbling complicated amuse bouches in white linens and caramel tans.

Here’s what else ‘summer people’ do that I cannot. They legitimately read broadsheet papers over breakfast (and the news bits, not just the travel pages) somehow managing to turn every page without suffocating themselves in the process. Their Hermes beach bags (not the Zara rip-offs) are expertly packed with only three things: a striped towel brought from home , sun lotion and a prize-winning book that they are clearly half-way through. This is in contrast to mine which is over-stuffed with everything except the two things we need: sun lotion (fuckl!) and a towel, which necessitates grabbing one from the hotel bathroom, which on arrival I then realise is a hand towel. I do however always carry with me a ‘serious’ book; the same ‘serious’ book I have been carrying around with me every summer since 2018 and of which, I have never managed to get beyond page 8.

As you can see, our dogs know to never embarrass us at hotels (Also Will is not hitting him, simply using the effective technique as using his hand as a barrier)

‘Summer people’ appear to have blow dried hair at all times, even when it’s 40 degrees outside. They luxuriate over dinner, rather than eat everything at break-neck speed and then look at one another and say: ‘Shall we go and watch Come Dine With Me in the room now?’ When ‘summer people’ wear orange it it not orange but a sort of blush-tangerine. When I wear it, the hue is more Fanta Zero. Summer people go swimming in waterfalls of gold chains which don’t turn green and look like a bunch of seaweed got caught round your neck. (This is because their chains are 18 carat gold rather than brass). They know how to tip like grown-ups too, placing a discreet 5 Euro note, which has been pre-folded into a teeny tiny piece of an origami, into the bell boy’s hand. When we do it there’s usually an argument in the car about whose turn it is and how much is enough? The result being I usually end up trying to do an awkward hand shake and drop said note on the floor. At which point I’ll murmur something like ‘Er..that’s for you,’ and the poor bell boy will have to stoop to pick it up, which then sends me into paroxysms of anxiety for the next 24 hours about being seen as an Imperialist. 

Summer people just look cool, like they all fell out of a Slim Aarons photograph and landed, supine and serene on sun loungers from Mykonos to Marseille. They have dogs that know their place and who sit, teddy-bear like on their minuscule laps during dinner. 

Of course, I’m at an age now where I have all the gear. I have the white jeans and the Chanel sandals and the sort of haircut that looks after itself in the morning. I have the posh beach towel (which, of course I left on the kitchen side) and I have the gold chains that dangle round my neck. And yet somehow it just doesn’t work. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, an interloper about to be found out at any moment.

And yet, I love the summer people, for a European summer without them is like Trafalgar Square without the pigeons. Its perfection is incomplete without their presence. 

WHAT OR WHO ELSE ANNOYS YOU ON HOLIDAY? TELL ME BELOW..I’D LOVE TO KNOW, LARGELY SO I FEEL LESS ALONE. HA!