Unholy days: a rant.

All ready for a challenge? Then fill in the missing word:

We're all going on a Summer...

What? You said holiday? Oh, if only. Don't you mean a neighcation (that, I'm afraid, is a holiday with a horse). Or, if pushed for time, a daycation? Or, if you're keen to use your leisure time to starve yourself, a weighcation?

Or how about a spacation (that's not a trip to Mars, by the way, it's a visit to a Spa)?

All these ghastly cobbled-together words...is it that the travel agents feel obliged to warn their clients that these holidays will be exceptionally badly designed?


And it doesn't end there. If a -cation doesn't appeal then you can go flightseeing (visiting places without touching the ground (a new meaning of the word visiting with which I was not familiar); brokepacking, which is of course cheap backpacking, as if anyone would go in for luxury backpacking...hang on, though, I think I've just spotted a gap in the market. You could do holidays where people walk about being really, like, authentic and meeting really poor people and stuff, but still get a proper bath, clean sheets and wifi in the evenings. You could call it greenbackpacking. 

Hey, I could make a fortune, here. How about a line in well-being pilgrimages (quackpacking); seaweed-fancying tours (wrackpacking); war zone tourism (flakpacking); and tours of Higher Tibet (yakpacking). 

I have a horrible feeling that crackpacking might be the most profitable of all, but as I'm on the side of the angels I'll stick to the even more thrilling hackpacking, which is a holiday where you get to be an investigative journalist staking out the crackpackers.

All of which leaves me with the depressing thought that people will do absolutely anything if only you charge them enough.

Word To Use Today...um...look, just none of this lot, okay?