Minor Issues: When things go wrong on a family trip, have a sense of perspective

SINGAPORE – In the book Bad Trips, a collection of essays by writers on eventful journeys, one of the contributors, author George Woodcock, writes: “My idea of a worst journey is conditioned by the fact that long ago, in my boyhood, I read a book on Scott’s Antarctic expedition... The book was called The Worst Journey In The World, and even now, when I think of bad journeys, that title by Apsley Cherry-Garrard echoes in my mind. In an absolute sense, a worst journey is one that ends, like Scott’s or Bering’s, in death.”

I read this years before I was married, long before I had children. But that reflection has stayed with me and coloured my outlook when that stage in life for the planning of and going on family holidays arrived.