Summer holidays: a time to be your worst self

Sometimes living your best life means wearing an adult rashie all day, getting your beer belly out and washing your undies in a sink, writes Darren Levin.

Hi from the Gold Coast, where I’ve spent 10 days in an adult rashie because, well — did you miss the part where I mentioned that I was on the Gold Coast?

Back home in Melbourne the thought of wearing a rashie down to the local shops or in public would cause me to break out in hives, but where else other than the Gold Coast can you give yourself permission to do something completely off brand?

During regular day-to-day life you may be a coffee snob, but on holidays you can rekindle your secret love affair with Mocha Frappuccinos and not have to explain to your barista back home that you’ve “been seeing someone a little more, um, basic”. Because what happens on holidays stays on holidays, my friend.

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Another thing you can do on holidays: eat Maccas with your kids and not be judged. You can even let them get an apple juice popper instead of a water. Or a 30 cent cone, which — mirroring the ways in which millennials are being screwed over more than any generation in human history — I’ve discovered now cost 60 cents.

Yes, there’s nothing like holidays to get us back in touch with our true disgusting selves.

Family holidays are a time for saying yes to your kids and going with it. Picture: iStock

Maybe you’ve been waiting all year to take your shirt off? Well, the good news is holidays are a safe space for middle-aged blokes with beer bellies and terrible tattoos so g’arn live your best life, I say. You don’t even need to put it back on at any stage — even for dinner. Welcome to paradise.

You can wear thongs to a fine dining restaurant here, eat three ice-creams a day from the Cold Rock Creamery — and take them to a new extra level by getting lollies smooshed in.

You can take your family to La Porchetta (loose Italian translation: the roasted pig, which kinds describes your holiday state) and order every dish with pineapple on it.

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You can get an outdoor $8 massage on a plastic garden chair while having your palms read or work your way through the E.L James trilogy.

Why not forget to shower for three days? You’re going to the pool anyway and chlorine kills everything.

Wash your under garments with a bar of soap in a sink. Or don’t wear any under garments at all.

Eat your body weight in prawns at a casino buffet.

Anything goes when you’re on holidays away from your regular life. Picture: supplied

Extend the three second rule to five seconds, especially when it comes to hot chips.

Spend $20 trying to win a $2 stuffed animal in a skill tester because your kid threw a tantrum and you want to prove your true worth as a dad.

Eat a peak ‘90s focaccia with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, or try a $10 big breakfast at a cafe that still serves margarine in tinfoil packaging.

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Spend an afternoon baking in the sun until your flesh peels off. Even skin cancer needs a vacation from time to time, so you’re probably in the clear.

Read a Judy Nunn novel about a convict’s “new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross”.

Drink a cocktail with Malibu as the key ingredient.

On holidays it really is okay to give yourself permission to let your freak flag fly before you go back to the restrictive rigmarole of your daily life.

Then again maybe we’d all be better off if we brought some of our no-effs-to-give holiday self back to the ‘real’ world after our bags are unpacked and the tans have well and truly faded.

Darren Levin is a writer, editor and wannabe dad-fluencer based in Melbourne. Find him on Twitter and Instagram.