Several days into my Greek holiday, I am beginning to feel eerily relaxed. This is partly because our children aren’t with us – I can’t get used to the fact that when a restaurant lunch comes to €20 a head, I owe only €40 – but also because they aren’t at home, either: two of them are on their own separate travels abroad, so the house is comparatively safe.
This state of affairs leaves me with a lot of spare psychic space. When I am not swimming or reading or eating, I occupy myself by hating Donald Trump. It’s not just a holiday thing – I’ve been hating Donald Trump for years – but in my present untroubled state, it has become an obsession. I check my phone repeatedly to see if Donald Trump has said anything stupid, or untrue – or stupid and untrue – in the last half-hour. If he hasn’t, I feel crushed. But usually he has.
“Donald Trump is now insisting his call for the assassination of Hillary Clinton was just sarcasm,” I tell my wife, following her from kitchen to pool, phone in hand.
“Huh?” she says.
I have to ration the number of new Trump anecdotes I pass on to my wife. She’s not really interested, and believes the existing evidence for Donald Trump’s stupidity is ample.
“It wasn’t sarcasm!” I say.
My wife’s silence carries the tacit implication that perhaps the most outrageous part of the story is not that Donald Trump doesn’t understand how sarcasm works.
That night, I can’t sleep because of the heat. Just before dawn, I get up and sit by the pool with my phone, but nothing is happening. I spend the morning waiting for Donald Trump to wake up and say stupid things. I look up sarcasm online, so I can be certain I know what it means. After lunch, exhausted, I fall asleep with a book on my face, not rising until the cocktail hour. “I’m so relaxed,” I say. “I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already.”
“It’s Thursday,” my wife says.
“Is it?” I say. “Are you sure?”
Later that evening, the middle one texts to say that he’s run out of money in Amsterdam, fully four days before his scheduled return. I spend an hour trying to transfer funds into his account while sitting at a beach restaurant, but it’s dark and I haven’t got my glasses, and I end up locking myself out of my online banking. Later still, when I cannot sleep again, I read about Donald Trump telling a Florida crowd how excited he was to be in Miami on a Friday night. The crowd shouted back that it was Thursday, but he took no notice. I think: idiot.
Over breakfast the next morning, while waiting for my bank’s helpline to open, I review the previous day’s stupidity. “Donald Trump now says he was also being sarcastic when he claimed that Obama literally founded Isis,” I say. No one at the table comments.
“Any more gold medals?” my wife asks. Her question starts a lively conversation about the Olympics that leaves me behind.
My wife’s phone rings. I can tell from her bright hello that it’s the youngest one calling from Italy. As she holds the phone to her ear, her smile fades and her eyes narrow. She seems to be focusing on the distant horizon. “You missed your flight?!” she says. “How did you miss your flight?”
“He didn’t,” I say. “Did he?”
“Don’t panic,” my wife says. “Go back to the check-in desk and do your big eyes. You might have to cry a little.”
“I love going on holiday without my children,” I say. “It’s so stress-free.”
Now that, I tell myself, is textbook sarcasm.
