Who will win the battle of the holiday playlist?

Holidaying in the UK – “staycationing”, to use one of the 21st century’s most annoying words – has many advantages. This summer, at least, you won’t find yourself dodging wildfires; only showers. And a trip to Dorset or Dumfriesshire can be made without the kind of lengthy airport queue that must, as they clasp their pointlessly blue passports to their heaving chests, make Brexiteers proud to have taken back control. What’s more, you can buy goods in your nearest holiday supermarket here without having to pretend that the mass-produced cheese you’ve proudly popped into your basket is really a local delicacy.

But there are downsides too. You can’t feign ignorance when you go round a roundabout the wrong way, for instance. No one finds it charming when your kids start charging about in a restaurant at 10pm. And wildfires or no wildfires, swimming in the blue water off a Greek island will always beat desperate attempts to doggy-paddle away from the turds that have been released around our shores by Britain’s water companies.

Then, of course, there are the interminable car journeys. Nothing says summer on the south coast better than a 25-mile jam on the M3. And surely there is no phrase which has crossed the generations more effectively than “Are we nearly there yet?” The answer – “No”, thanks to the aforementioned traffic jam.

Thank goodness there is always music to keep the troops entertained. A former colleague posted his family’s holiday journey playlist to social media this week: Taylor Swift making up the three-fifths of it chosen by his kids. I would have winced, but as a bit of a Swiftie myself, I’d have been pretty happy with it.

For the last two years, my children’s primary fixation has been with Eurovision songs, having first been entranced by the contest in 2021. We’ve had several lengthy trips to see my brother in deepest Ceredigion dominated by some execrable Euro-pop, as the kids sing along to their favourites – among them, the 2019 winner “Arcade” by the Netherlands’ Duncan Laurence; and Samira Efendi’s dramatic “Cleopatra”, which would surely have given Azerbaijan victory in 2020, had Covid not intervened.

We could, I suppose, ask them to put on their headphones while we stick on Radio 2 in the front, but there is no chance that they can listen quietly. Better, in the end, to give in to their requests, and as a compromise have the right to veto any especially poor numbers.

Thirty-odd years ago I was having the same battle with my parents. We coalesced happily around Test match commentary, but when the cricket wasn’t on, my brother and I would take turns choosing a tape to listen to on the car stereo. Erasure, T’Pau, Europe and numerous Now That’s What I Call Music! compilations travelled with us to Derbyshire, Devon and even the Dolomites.

We had hysterics when my dad (perhaps purposefully) misheard the lyrics to Kirsty MacColl’s ode to male faithlessness and exclaimed in horror: “There’s a guy works down the chip shop who smells his anus?!”

More horrifying with hindsight is that we regularly listened to a collection of Monty Python songs which included that great paean to mutual oral sex, “Sit on My Face”. My parents never uttered a word, bless them, but we eventually stopped asking for the cassette when I got old enough to understand what the song was about.

Thankfully, we’ve not had occasion to blush at our kids’ choices, although too much Parry Gripp (an American composer of kids’ songs, such as “Narwhal Eating a Bagel”) can lead to a certain incandescence at the stupidity of the world.

In any event, my daughter’s music tastes are finally broadening. The other day, when she was home from school thanks to striking teachers, I heard coming from her room a playlist that I could almost have chosen myself: Spice Girls, Rufus Wainwright, Abba, Ben Folds Five, Chas & Dave, a couple of the more decent Eurovision entries, and Boney M.

It turned out to be Alexa playing the songs most often requested by the family, which suggests our upcoming 200 miles in the car might not be quite so ghastly after all.