It’s a scene that will be horribly familiar to anyone who has ever been the token single friend on a group trip full of couples. In the first episode of Two Weeks in August, the BBC’s new eight-part drama following a gang of one-time university pals as they reunite for a Greek villa getaway, Leila Farzad’s Nat is relegated to sleeping on a forlorn pull-out bed in some sort of under-the-stairs nook. It definitely doesn’t quite meet the universal definition of a room – surely that would require, well, walls.
It’s a step down even from the sub-par twin room that she’d previously been assigned to share with Hugh Skinner’s Jacob, the only other single guest – until, that is, Jacob’s new love interest turned up unexpectedly and pushed Nat down the accommodation hierarchy. Everyone knows that when it comes to mates’ trips, those who aren’t in a couple tend to end up languishing at the bottom of the unofficial power rankings.
In fact, watching this moment play out on iPlayer dragged me back to a weekend trip in my twenties when, after being permitted a room of one’s own to sleep in for a night, I was unceremoniously booted out of said room by group decree when a boyfriend and girlfriend turned up the next day. I ended up on the living room sofa. Sigh.
Nat’s sad sleeping arrangement is just one painfully realistic detail in a series filled with acute observations about the often fraught reality of the big group holiday. High expectations of time off in the sun with a bunch of people you really like, at least in theory, don’t always quite match up to the reality – which can turn out to be more of an extended exercise in diplomacy, with bonus sunburn, hangovers, and passive-aggressive comments about the Splitwise balance.
In the show, there are differing attitudes to parenting – actor Solomon (Nicholas Pinnock) and his glam second wife Jess (Antonia Thomas) seem to turn a blind eye to the fact that their young son is wreaking havoc in the villa. There is an awkward disparity in budgets – while Solomon and co bring their truculent French nanny along for the jaunt, Jessica Raine’s Zoe and Damien Molony’s Dan are operating on more straitened resources, with a teacher’s salary and a business that’s just gone bust.
There are also cringe-inducing stand-offs about dinner (obviously, someone failed to disclose their vegetarianism before another couple started cooking) and some post-wine unburdening of secrets that can’t be retracted the next morning. All in all, then, it’s a pretty accurate rendition of a trip that should perhaps have remained a figment of the WhatsApp group’s collective imagination, rather than being brought to life in 30C heat. “Nothing fun ever happens when someone says ‘It’ll be fun’,” Dan gripes dolefully to his wife – it’s a slightly Eeyore-ish sentiment, but in this case, it’s hard to disagree.
A great holiday with mates can be life-affirming, sure. But if it goes wrong, the fallout can be huge. I still have vague childhood memories of whispers of feuds between local families who’d optimistically booked a joint week at Center Parcs, had some sort of huge to-do in the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, and avoided eye contact for evermore.
Part of the problem is the fact that we might have over-invested – emotionally and financially – in the trip before the plane has even taken off. Once we reach our thirties and forties, says psychotherapist and author Eloise Skinner, work and family responsibilities mean that we have less time to spend on our mates – “which can make time spent together feel more high-stakes”, she notes.
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There’s often a sense of “we really need to make the most of this time”, she adds, “especially if the trip was expensive, or involved taking up annual leave from work, or getting childcare”. This “can make any small disagreement feel more significant”, Skinner says, “or there can be additional anxiety around making sure everyone has a good time”.
Plus, our thirties and forties are a time when friendships inevitably start to shift, as different priorities can cause previously close mates to grow apart. Group trips, Skinner explains, “might reveal some of those tensions”. Realising during the holiday “that you no longer have much in common” can prove stressful, but “can also involve some degree of grief or sadness”.
Money can be a major flashpoint, too. When you’re all fresh out of school or university, everyone tends to be on a similar budget – a tight one. A few decades on, though, the group members’ financial situations will probably differ wildly. Lee Thompson, the CMO and co-founder of social travel company Flash Pack, recalls one trip “where one of the lads brought his own food into the restaurant we’d all agreed on, because he didn’t want to pay for the menu. He sat there eating what he’d brought from home while the rest of us ordered. That’s what group holidays do to grown adults.”
And some people are, quite simply, terrible at sorting out their Monzo payment requests, meaning that the organiser has to temporarily become some sort of amateur bailiff. “As the organiser, you become the bad guy,” Thompson says. “You’re chasing your mates for money. I once had a hotel threaten to cancel the rooms because two of my friends hadn’t paid. I spent a week hounding people I love so that I didn’t lose a holiday I’d already put a deposit on. Not a memory I look back on fondly.”
Indeed, while holidays might be intended as a break from the humdrum of everyday logistics and responsibilities, these do tend to creep back into the picture… and often the group has diverging ideas about how such things should be handled. If one person takes charge or appoints themselves de facto leader, others might start muttering mutinously about their power grab. But equally, if someone feels like they’re doing all the legwork – painstakingly planning the daily itinerary, for example, or sorting the logistics for every single evening meal – then resentment can fester there, too.
In my favourite episode of BBC comedy Motherland, the mum-gang head to a rural Airbnb, only to default to asking poor put-upon Kevin (Paul Ready) about everything from the wifi code to the opening times of the corner shop. He ends up on the verge of a psychotic break, maniacally digging a pit in the garden to cook a hog roast for his ungrateful fellow travellers.
It’s not entirely far-fetched – I’ve seen a very similar glint in the eye of one pal after she ended up having to shoulder full admin responsibilities for a hen weekend, essentially being shoved into the role of a primary-school teacher on a class trip (she looked like she could probably have done some serious damage with the novelty straws, if she’d been tested just one more time).
Jenna, 32, had a “disastrous” holiday in France with a dozen friends about a decade ago, which exploded into a huge row several days in, after the men in the group failed to pull their weight in terms of cooking and tidying. “The next day, all the girls went and did one activity and all the boys did another, because neither side could bear to look at each other,” she recalls.
The one contribution the lads made? They mixed up some sangria – “but they accidentally poured salt into the jug instead of sugar, so it was undrinkable”. The size of the group, she adds, meant that every meal ended up like a chore, “because trying to spontaneously go out for dinner with 12 people is impossible, and everyone was hot and bothered and hangry”. Somehow, Jenna adds, the gang are still pretty close, but even though 10 years have passed, whenever France gets mentioned, “everyone will raise their eyebrows and look the other way”.
So how can you avoid meltdowns and make sure that you’re all still speaking on the return flight? Skinner recommends setting out expectations about budget, schedules and any group activities beforehand, when no one has been at the salty sangria or is suffering from heatstroke. “These types of conversation ahead of time can help people feel heard and appreciated, meaning that discussions while on the holiday have a better foundation for collaboration and mutual respect,” she says.
Factoring in time “for people to have their own space and pursue their own interests” can be a good idea, too – just because you’ve travelled as a group doesn’t mean that you have to spend every waking moment together, and you can always plan some more low-key activities “that allow for group reconnection, like simple dinners or time to chill together”, Skinner adds. It’s all worth bearing in mind next time a Doodle poll of August dates drops into your WhatsApp chat – it might just save your friendship.
