You and me, and me and you ... on vacation

By Rowan Peiling
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Wednesday, Jan 23, 2008, Page 13

Romantic getaways may not be everyone's idea of a great holiday, but they are a good way to keep a relationship together. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Ah, romantic breaks. What a wealth of optimistic nuance is concealed in such an innocent little phrase: candles, champagne, dinner a deux, sunsets, moonlight, seashores, camiknickers, shared baths, swooning kisses, Barry White. All these things leading inexorably to the bedroom where - freed from the shackles of domestic routine - elemental lovemaking on a par with Cathy and Heathcliff will splice your tremulous souls forever. No wonder many men quiver in horror at the very word "romance." High expectations are not something that most males welcome from their womenfolk. As my husband says, "Sometimes it's best to hope for nothing more from life than that your man clips his nasal hair." But my beloved springs from that peculiar breed of British males who fear nothing more than that they may be called upon to show some form of PDA (public display of affection), such as holding hands. The variety of hand-squeezes he's developed over the years to signal "I'm about to let go of your palm in order to thrust my digits deep in my pocket from whence you will never retrieve them," would delight a Mason.

Nevertheless, when I met my spouse 12 years ago I was given some excellent advice by a family friend: "Escape once a year - just the two of you - come what may. Even if it means locking infants in a cupboard with a box of Cocopops for a week." She described it as a form of long-term relationship annual checkup, and she was right. I have just learned over the years to pretend the expedition has some purpose other than romance - that the real reason we are going to Italy is to visit a fascinating little aviation museum. I am the only woman I know who can navigate Paris, Avignon and Lowestoft by a tour of their scale aircraft modeling retail outlets.

It was not always thus. In our courting days many moons ago my beloved spontaneously arranged a romantic break at the plush seaside hotel in eastern England. This seemed to tick all the boxes. But within hours of checking in my other half radiated all the hedonistic excess of a nuclear winter. After an evening's cajoling he finally confessed that the last time he'd stayed at the hotel he had been with his ex and they had rowed and how he feared all his relationships were destined to failure and whether the world ended in fire or ice it was without doubt doomed and ... I gave him a shake, a whisky and took him for a walk. Next time we stayed at another hotel.

Despite this, I gave him one last chance to organize a romantic holiday. "Where do you want to go?" he said. "An island," I murmured, "surprise me." And he did. He booked us into a blue-rinse guesthouse that served tinned mandarins on the Isle of Wight. When we arrived I burst into tears. After that, I never again trusted my husband with such an important enterprise as romance. I realized he was not the type - unlike the beau of a friend - to organize a birthday treasure trail, complete with cryptic clues, that swept her via the National Portrait Gallery and London-Heathrow airport to a hotel in Marrakesh. Although my friend soon decided her suitor was a bit too in touch with his feminine side; he had even packed her case.

The truth is, it's a fool's errand to strain too arduously over romantic scenarios: a friend dragged her boyfriend to Capri in the hope he'd propose; he went down on one knee, but only because he'd lost a contact lens. I managed to get my beloved to Venice, but only on the pretext we were there for the art and, of course, dwarves in red capes. But broadly speaking I've found you can't go wrong with Italy, Paris, Provence and Scottish islands. Just don't mention the "R" word.