The excitement is building ahead of this year’s girl’s holiday, where we’ll romanticise being in Greece as though we’re on the set of Mamma Mia and not on a party island, in a 3-star hotel, with limited air conditioning - as we should. We used to fantasise about these kinds of things at the tender age of fourteen, sat in the back of an English class and it still doesn’t quite feel like we’re ‘allowed’ to. I still imagine someone stopping me at the gates screaming “Someone stop that girl, she can’t travel alone, she’s just a child!” as I run through security like the little boy in ‘Love, actually’, but I’m 21 and my parents keep asking “Where are you going again?”
I saw a picture on a beautiful memorial bench in what I believe to be Central Park that read ‘We were girls together’ and it broke my heart because we were once girls together and now, we’re, dare I say it…women together, even more surreal - travelling together. I think that’s what is so exciting about this holiday, the simple idea of us being together. We used to practically live in each other's pockets as we’d rehearse the lunchtime ritual of saving each other seats in the dinner hall and plaiting each other's hair, just to be told “Girls, this isn’t a hair salon” by an irritated teacher. Now, I have to savour this one week because I don’t know when the next one will be.
I cannot wait to line up our beach towels again, basking in the heat with our books in the air, blocking out the sun as we all turn a page in unison. Most things on a girl’s holiday are done in unison. We eat together, sleep together, sunbathe together, do our makeup together. My attachment style feels slightly overwhelmed at this thought, as someone who craves alone time but there’s no feeling like getting ready for the night as a group of giggly girls. Passing palettes around, curling each other’s hair, filling in someone’s eyebrows and leaving the straighteners on for the next person, all the mess and the glitter and the trials and tribulations of choosing a dress, make the harassment on the strip worth it. We used to even make plans to do this together before an average night out in Derby when we were seventeen, because we simply loved the whole comradery of it.
By the end of next week my clothes and books will be passed around the group and my freckles will soon outnumber the grains of sand on the beach, my skin will have already started to peel, and my camera roll will be full of obnoxious bikini pictures and Tik Toks and I cannot wait for every second of it. Not to mention the drinking and the alcohol, which I’m sure will form a large part of this trip considering we are going to a place renowned for its booze cruising, beach partying and clubbing. It won’t be long until we’ve all swapped names and are convincing some poor boy from Surrey that I am in fact named Matilda Malia aged 25 and my family rule the town. Last year, when a boy asked to buy me a drink and I - with a very smug look - told him I had a boyfriend, he asked me, very bluntly: “Well why are you here then?” Clearly irritated at the small pool of women available to him on the island and a percentage of those not being interested. And to that boy I say: this is why…to be girls together!