From Jester To King XXI

Holidays For Big Kids: Don’t be a kid, just act like one

Come on our next HBK holiday and let rip with your most obstreperous child in an idyllic holiday setting. See our brochure for further details. Destinations all around the globe for anally-retentive child-adults where you can act like an eight year-old and where foot-stamping tantrums are positively encouraged. Terms and conditions apply.

We sent our very own John Magnolia on our spoilt-brat break to St Anton with his two young nephews. Magnolia reports: I spent five days in an eight year-old’s body courtesy of HBK and loved every minute of it. Everything child-sized is catered for, skis, ski-suits etc, they all happened to be the perfect size for my new child-body which wasn’t even measured before, somehow they just knew! Everything was so tiny it was marvellous including my skis which were more like two tiny matchsticks than big unfriendly blocks of reinforced plastic. I had no poles but didn’t really need them. I really felt like one of the boys and was quite literally indistinguishable from them. We maxed up the childishness especially on anything involving stairs and staircases and staircase handles, we rushed up and down one of them in the bottom-station cable car like maniacs whooping and screaming and I never knew stairs could be so much fun! Then there was all the watching each other and comparing exactly how each one did it, me personally I glided down the stair-ramp with my back foot trailing but then my older nephew would show me his way of gliding -- in fact he just decided to jump all the way down on that occasion which I thought was a bit dangerous -- and try to surpass me, and oh for the intricacies of rambunctious boys doing perfectly functional things on, and with, objects. We were always keeping score. At mealtimes we wrought havoc. When I did or didn’t want something I just let out these ear-wrenching shrieks and my surrogates were forced to endure it. You always get what you want, but even when you don’t it doesn’t really matter. And everything seems so much more immediate when you’re not an adult. For example I didn’t have to constantly moderate my speaking volume, in fact I didn’t have to think about anything before doing it. There was never any comeuppance, no matter what I did! Not only that, I didn’t have to walk around with this massive ball of sadness in me. What a relief!

So if you don’t want people to treat you like a grown man of forty, try HBK for some good old-fashioned children’s fun! HBK: where your Child’s taken care of.