What not to pack on your next holiday

THERE are some absolute essentials you should include in your luggage on a getaway. And then there are the things that I usually pack, writes Victoria Hannaford.

A squirrel was kicked off a flight in the US after a woman tried to board with it as her emotional support animal. Picture: AP

WHAT are the absolute essentials to pack for a holiday?

Well, that depends on who you ask.

A woman in the US was told this week her emotional support animal — a squirrel — was not considered kosher cargo, and was promptly kicked off the flight.

But with preparations for my family’s biennial Christmas gulag — sorry getaway — in full swing at the moment, I have been starting to see her point. There’s a sense of impending terror, knowing that my extended family will be all together in a remote beachside town, and forced to socialise for several days on end.

In the face of it, I too started to think about packing my own emotional support items. And like anyone who’s ever departed without adequate research, preparation or thought, I have some form, making very big errors in the past with my luggage.

As a naive backpacker setting forth for a journey that would take in vast swathes of Australia before setting off for the UK, I forgot to calculate the toll my backpack would take on my actual back, and loaded that 70 litre capacity thing up to the limit.

Cute, but apparently not kosher cargo on a flight. Picture: Getty

I decided it was imperative to make room for Vikram Seth’s epic tome A Suitable Boy, with the rationale that as a very long book — one of the longest ever published — it would be the only reading I would need to take. I have no recollection of it except that it was extremely weighty, both literally and figuratively, and I never finished it. It did not make a return trip.

Then about a decade later I set off once again with a backpack for the El Camino in Spain — a walking pilgrimage — convinced that my very heavy mid-calf cowboy boots with a Cuban heel would be an essential item. At least, they would be once I had completed two weeks of walking and no longer wanted to wear hiking boots, but again, I had to lug them on my back every day before I landed at journey’s end in Santiago de Compostela. I have vivid memories of the sniggers of my fellow walkers at the hostels along the route, who all seemed to spend their evenings swapping tales of how you can cut weight from a backpack by rotating between two pairs of knickers while smugly rinsing out quick dry beige pants with zip-off legs.

These boots are in no way made for walking. Picture: iStock

Anyway, the moral of the story is that Santiago is a lovely city full of cobblestone streets which are perfect for twisting an ankle encased in a Cuban heel.

But it seemed I’d learnt little from these bruising misadventures. A couple of days ago, I decided I’d landed upon the must-have item for my upcoming summer sojourn.

A bread maker.

I don’t own one now, have never wanted one before this point, but I thought, with the family holiday taking place in a tiny town with only a pub and a general store, there might not be a lot of fresh bread available over the holiday period.

Obviously the only thing to do was to pack a bread maker. I’m not saying I came up with this notion after several wines, but I’m not not saying it either. (I even threatened to do a Twitter poll about the idea, so convinced was I of my own genius, despite the pleas from those who were listening that I should perhaps instead go to bed and stop banging on about bread.)

A “portable” espresso machine. Too much, or not enough? Picture: Supplied

Thankfully, my inbox the morning after #breadmakergate saved me from my folly.

A firm is spruiking a “portable espresso machine” (it’s huge), touting it as a “travel accessory beyond compare” that is perfect to “pop in the boot with your luggage”. And then there was the small matter of price: $4299, which would surely obliterate many holiday budgets.

But the clincher? The idyllic portrait of a happy couple, beachside, with the espresso machine between them. It was the perfect holiday snap, except that it was utterly absurd.

Finally, I’ve seen the error of my ways. I’m just glad to know there’s someone out there who has a more ridiculous idea of what’s essential to pack for a holiday than me.

Victoria Hannaford is a writer and producer for RendezView.

@vhannaford