HAVING just returned from France, which is shit, Grace Wood-Morris can state definitively that it does not count as a proper holiday abroad. She explains: 

It’s too close 

Real holidays require a flight, not three days in the back of a Kia Sportage without wifi. And a ferry in the middle which is humiliating only to end up in the same boring woody green countryside we have in Nottingham and the same pissing rainstorms. Apparently it’s nice weather in the south of France but we didn’t f**king go there, did we? 

There’s nothing to do 

Imagine England but flatter, duller and full of fashions from literally two decades ago. The kind of sweatshirts and jeans that you see on footage of 9-11 being unashamedly worn. The teenagers here can only be pitied. There were two of them hanging around a pizza place like it was a nightclub. And to be fair it is the only thing open after 8pm. 

The music’s shit 

Omigod, French radio. Who told them they could do pop music. Song after song that’s so wrong, as if every X-Factor reject was exiled here forever. A dance version of The Sound of Silence gave me trauma. Sometimes they play a proper song just to reinforce how bad theirs are. They played a lot of Dua Lipa. If the French think she’s good she’s over. 

Nobody speaks English 

In real holiday locations, all-inclusive ones, everyone speaks a real language. They don’t mess you about pretending they can’t understand a perfectly normal conversation about Addison Rae’s controversial bikini on her TikTok, but in France they’re not just pretending they can’t, they actually can’t. There’s no excuse now there’s Duolingo. 

All the English people are the wrong ones 

There’s no hot boys with abs on lads’ tours. It’s teachers, like mum and dad, all proud like it’s an achievement to come to the nearest country to England and choose a bit where there aren’t any beaches. Like that makes you special instead of chillingly cringe. 

Food is not a holiday 

You can literally get food at home? French food even, because it’s the same shit they have everywhere with extra garlic? But my f**king God, everyone out there acts like they’ve never eaten before and it’s such bliss and mm, this mouthful of langoustines just made me come. And the wine. If you’re going on holiday for wine, that’s an addiction. 

They want to move here 

If we went to Turkey, like Kayden’s doing? I’d go to the ruins, moan about it and say they were shit but I’d get some decent selfies. Here we can’t drive past some crumbling pisshole without mum and dad saying ‘wow, you can buy that for only £20,000’ or ‘wouldn’t it be incredible to live here’. The minute I turn 18 I’m never coming to France ever again.