Family holiday, or summer school?

It's a difficult choice and not one we've had to make before. For the last couple of years, we've managed both. Our family holidays have never been extravagant. We're fans of grabbing an Interrail pass (free for under-12s!) and a tent and slogging round Europe, then following it with a week at Chetham's summer school for Sam and some kind of mildly sophisticated UK city break for our daughter, who is older. 

This year and the foreseeable future is slightly different because my career as a university lecturer is in the throes of a crisis (as it is for many). We decided to take our family holiday at Easter because the price difference from August is actually unbelievable.

Family holidays with teenagers can be difficult. They don't like each other for much of the time, they often don't like their parents, and my two found themselves stuck in a caravan for five days with no internet access and only family for company. Added to this was the fact that Sam missed the piano. He really missed it. I think if he could have left his sister at home and taken the piano, he'd have been fine, but as that's not in the spirit of a family holiday, I said no. 

Unexpectedly, our five days in a caravan in the south of France were mostly full of rain. Sam spent them shut in his room, reading a biography of Lizst and making notes about the composer's techniques so he could adopt them when he was finally reunited with his beloved piano. When the sun finally came out on the fourth day, we asked him to come to the pool. He humoured us for about 25 minutes, then returned to the caravan. Our daughter kept herself amused with writing and reading, but it was clear she'd rather have stayed in Paris, where we'd spent the first couple of days. (Admittedly, so would I.) 

We ended the trip with two days in Lille. Because this was a holiday on a shoestring, the four of us stayed in one room in a youth hostel, which wasn't as bad is it sounds. Next door to the youth hostel was a piano shop. Sam was waiting outside the next morning before it opened. 'Can I play?' he asked the lovely French owner as soon as he opened the door. I explained to the lovely French owner - in schoolgirl French - that we wouldn't be buying a piano, but my son played (jouer-ed?) and could he please have a go? The lovely French owner said yes, and led him to a grand piano on sale for 140,000 euros. It was pretty much the highlight of Sam's holiday.

When we came home, I had a frank discussion with them. 'Listen,' I said, 'I feel like I'm holding on to a dream that you two still actually want to come on a family holiday every year, but I'm sensing maybe you don't. Until I find a new job, we can't do everything the way we used to, so we've got some choices to make. Holiday, or your own interests?'

For Sam, this was a no-brainer. Even if he hadn't just spent five days in a caravan in the rain and had instead gone to a Greek island, swum in the sea and eaten endless calamari, he still would have chosen Chetham's. 'I feel a bit bad,' he admitted, 'but I'd rather go the summer school than anything else.'

So that's it. For the next few years, Chetham's will be Sam's summer holiday. He has chosen, and I think will always choose, five days of total immersion in the piano over pretty much anything else. I could offer him  two weeks in the Maldives (well, I couldn't, but if I could) and he would choose the summer school. My holiday will be accompanying him - sitting in on his lessons, going to the concerts, talking to other parents and other participants. It's not exactly exotic, but it's a world away from my daily life of writing novels and waiting for the breakthrough publication that means we can have expensive holidays again. And in many ways, that's what it's all about: the lifetime commitment to developing an art form will always, always involve sacrifice. And when you love it, it's not even a sacrifice. It's just what you do so you can pursue the thing you love, the thing that makes you you.