The joy of an ironic minibreak. The squeak of polyester clothing of the locals, the rumble of articulated lorries, the smoke belching from factory chimneys. Cold food, warm beer, little sachets of processed milk. A fold out Travelodge sofa for 2, kiss me quick hats, and sticks of rock branded ‘Skegness’.
If you’ve no idea what I’m on about then you’ve never been on a proper Ironic Minibreak (or IMB, for short). In the same vein as the experimental travel craze much reported by Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/experimentaltravel) the IMB involves bringing an unexpected element into your free time.
The irony of the IMB is that you take a trip somewhere you don’t want to go. Decide – generally on the spur of the moment - to head off and spend at least one night in a place you normally wouldn’t be seen dead in. Bognor, Skegness, Stevenage, Leicester…anywhere you’d never think of will do.
My boyfriend Jamie and I have been on several of these trips. Memorable outings to Gateshead, Hatfield and Milton Keynes stick in the mind; and we carry possibly permanent scars of a spontaneous autumn weekend in Southend on Sea. My mates and I still remember fondly a weekend 2 years ago when 7 of us shared a Travelodge room by the motorway with nothing but a Gideon bible to keep us company.
The IMB is an exercise in getting out of your comfort zone. Experiencing culture shock less than 100 miles from your front door challenges your cozy life and galvanises your boredom.
The joys of the IMB are many. A break, as we all know is as good as a rest. You can get the insight of distance from your life. And the IMB can be extra pleasurable as it shows you the brilliance of what you had assumed to be boring or mundane. It’s good for the soul to have your assumptions proved wrong. *
You have to put aside your preconceptions of what a holiday consists of as you try to have fun in other, and more unusual, ways. In Southend for example we started a tally of drunk teenage mothers in each pub we went in and enjoyed watching old ladies in a karaoke bar start fighting each other, a la tramp wars. My friend Hannah and I had one of our best holiday experiences at the Museum of Pharmacology in Havana, where we were given a tour entirely in Spanish; likewise my friend Clare and I couldn’t find a bad word for Llangollen’s Museum of Gnomes (as it rended us totally speechless).
If you’d like to join the IMB revolution you’ll need some guidelines. Here are my top tips for planning your own IMB:
1. Be spontaneous. especially if you are normally a person who plans everything. You will find it takes you out of your comfort zone in an exilerating way to just go to a station and get on the first train leaving the station.
2. Go with someone with a sense of humour. Some people just can’t put themselves to one side and that’s ok. But not when you end up in a Travelodge on the motorway somewhere in Hertfordshire.
3. Choose somewhere you’ve never been before
4. Approach the place as if it was a place of unusual interest/ world capital/ world-famous city and use a guidebook/visit as many of the top ‘sites’ as you can, talk intelligably about the ‘local colour’ and immerse yourself in culture, like you would on any holiday.
5. Draw your own conclusions about the beauty of the area. Other couples might be enjoying a candlelit Parisian dinner but they probably haven’t seen the breathtaking sunset over the Gateshead ringroad.
6. Get as lost as you can – and then try and find your way back to your hotel. You’re sure to find something unexpected.
7. Buy a desposible camera/ pretend you’re from another country. Both techniques will help to boost the feeling of being a tourist in your own life.
8. Buy a big tacky souvenir and put it somewhere visible when you get home. It’ll remind you not to be so serious about life!
Above all IMBs are good things for you – they stretch your experience and challenge your preconceptions. Stand up and demand mediocrity, bad taste, shabby chic, tack and vulgarity. Take an IMB today!
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