Wendyl Nissen reveals the lengths she'll go to in order to keep her holidays free from interruption.
For some people, taking a holiday is a simple exercise. They take their annual leave, switch off work, find a beach, drink a lot and lie in the sun reading magazines for three weeks. Others never really take a holiday. They might be lying in the sun but are on
their iPhones, taking calls from the office, monitoring emails, never really leaving the office behind. But they call it a holiday because they look like they're on holiday.
And then there are people like me, who become so obsessed that not a minute goes by when they aren't jealously guarding that minute from being interfered with in any way by something that could vaguely resemble work.
I'm the one who puts up a holiday message on her email when she is only away for one day. I'm the one who takes cruises because she knows it is very difficult to interrupt someone on a ship in the middle of the ocean to tell them the layout has changed and could they write 700 words more?
I'm the one who refuses to tell anyone where my caravan actually is when I go on holiday. Not because I'm particularly secretive, I just can't risk that someone will find me there and ask me to do some work.
I will go to all sorts of extremes to keep work away but none more than my recent refusal to help save a life. Something that occurred just this week while on holiday at the caravan at an undisclosed location, where, it has to be said, there are an unusual amount of life-threatening events per capita of campers.
The ambulance is no stranger to these parts. I was walking the dog on the beach and marvelling at my relaxed state, grateful to nature for providing such a wonderful beach to walk on when I came across a man in obvious distress clutching his chest.
I kept walking.
But only because I hadn't failed to notice that he was surrounded by a mob of well-meaning people, one of whom was summoning the ambulance back for the second time that day (someone had a turn earlier that morning, possibly after ignoring the toxic shellfish warning, which seems to come into effect just before the shellfish-hungry holidaymakers arrive in their hundreds and is lifted in early March when they've all gone home).
And as I walked past the life-threatening scene I had a thought I am not proud of: "Thank God I'm not a doctor or I would have had to stop and ruin my holiday".
Awful, I know. Some people might have wished they were a doctor so that they could have helped, but not me. Selfish holidaymaker that I am.
I continued my walk, still safely on holiday and on my way back saw the man again, now much more comfortable in the back of the ambulance on oxygen.
"All's well that end's well," I thought to myself with some satisfaction, until I told my husband how lucky I was to have escaped a holiday interruption.
"Do you not think that was a little selfish of you?" he suggested. "Do you not think that you might have had something to offer the man, even if it was a teaspoon of baking soda mixed with a little tea-tree oil," he smirked.
He was referring to my Green Goddess life where I offer natural cleaning solutions at the drop of a hat or a wine glass.
Don't even think of asking me around to your house if there's a wine glass likely to be tipped over because you'll find me rifling through your pantry looking for baking soda, or my latest favourite: neat white vinegar to make red wine stains, curry stains, or anything which may have been accidentally deposited on your carpet magically disappear.
My husband is no longer shocked to walk into a party and find me on all fours scrubbing furiously while carrying on a dialogue to the assembled crowd about the marvels of natural cleaning.
"You are no different from a doctor, really. If there's an emergency in your particular field you are quite happy to pitch in, because you love what you do," he stated, categorically. "Even if everyone else wishes you wouldn't."
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
