You would think that, with all the power Facebook wields, it might have decided by now to take down other people’s holiday posts before they reach our newsfeeds. As a general kind of rule.
It would be an excellent PR move for Facebook, and a great relief to all of us who live in these parts of the world. Seeing folk sunning themselves is not what we need right now.
Which is why I propose the following: anyone posting anything that involves standing in front of a temple or other monument, carrying luggage or drinking cocktails wearing short sleeves should be suspended from Facebook immediately, at least until they get home.
I don’t begrudge anyone a holiday. You’re all welcome to your nauseatingly steamy trips to the equator, your tuk-tuk rides, your interesting menu dilemmas featuring frogs and tarantulas, your just-chilling-at-the-airport-before-we-depart-for-somewhere-hot moments.
In fact, you can sit on some gorgeous beach and watch an amazing sunset, and you can do it upside down and nude for all I care. I just don’t need to know about it.
Because it’s cold here. Which is fine, we love our seasons here, we love complaining about the chill factor and our snotty inflictions and OMG how cold is it today I have so many layers on. But we don’t need other people reminding us that it might not be that way everywhere else in the world.
We certainly don’t need to see people on boats, beaches and in restaurants that don’t have any walls.
Once, a woman in Thailand told me she longed to visit because she’d heard about our winters, and she had always wondered what it felt like to wear a warm coat and a hat and feel cold.
Imagine the excitement! But there really is something beautiful about winter nights with the heater on, hot chocolate and ugg boots, bellies warm and bulging with winter soups and curries, Saturdays spent all day in pyjamas because it’s raining outside.
My kids love pretending to smoke cigarettes as their breath expels puffs of warm, vaporous air on a four-degree morning. They love the feel of numb fingers and toes at Sunday morning sport, thrill at the idea of training late at night on a cold, dark oval because you can’t see the mud patches for the puddles. Such fun.
It’s a bit over the top, I know. But the reality is winter is fine, and always was until people started using Facebook as a holiday journal. What they need to realise is that it really is only their mum who is genuinely pleased to know her beloveds have managed a winter escape to Fiji. Everyone else is going to think they’re showing off.
And they are. Here is me in my bikini. Here is me in a summer frock relaxing with a chardonnay by the pool. Here is the awesome shiny fun we are having, so suck it up suckers working back home in the middle of winter.
Right now, I’d happily swap parental-lock for holiday-lock. I don’t need holiday posts of tanned legs and swimming pools. What I really do need is pictures of butchers chopping up chickens in freezers, road-workers digging ditches in the rain, or people stacking vegies in the fridges at the local supermarket – that is, people also hard at work, like me, but also probably more freezing.
