So this is August...

...and what have I done?

With apologies to John Lennon, this is one of those "OHMYGODWHEREHASTHETIMEGONE" kind of posts. With less than a week to go before we finally go on our summer holiday (and believe me, it feels like everyone else has been and we've been waiting FOR EVER for it to be our turn), and then straight back into the new school term just after we get back, I am currently experiencing a strange mixture of holiday de-mob happiness and back-to-school madness.

Will we have packed everything for our fortnight in France? Will everything have been washed? Will my children have all their new items of uniform fully labelled before they return to the classroom? Will I remember that I am off on a business trip the week after we get back? Who knows... I like to think I'm doing a halfway reasonable job of remaining organised about it, but there may be an element of denial about the whole thing.

As the Germans say; Augen zu, und durch! (*roughly translated as Eyes closed, and through...)

Happy holidays!

Nostalgia is for Old People

The date stamp on the draft of this post says 8th June, so let's just pretend this post is inspired by recent events and gloss over the fact I've been meaning to write it for nearly two months and failed miserably, can we?

Two unrelated events over the past couple of months have got me thinking about nostalgia. Firstly, our half term holiday to the Peak District brought back a flood of familiar names that I remembered from my childhood. There I was, transported back to the age of 12, sitting in the car outside an antiques shop in Buxton while my parents rummaged around and oohed and aahed over "boring old junk". Or maybe thinking back to freezing in a cave with my friend Alison, laughing as the water dripped onto our heads from the stalactites above. Lyme Park hadn't changed much in over 20 years - unless you counted the state of the art playground that now seems de rigueur for any self-respecting tourist attraction.

Driving home after our holiday, we detoured to try and beat the inevitable South Manchester traffic jams, until there they were - the really familiar names from my childhood. Cheadle. Gatley. We passed my old school - the school where I spent only two years, and yet where, if I close my eyes I can still see the crowds of uniformed pupils meandering down the corridors, or smell the fear of going into the girls' toilets in case the older girls were in there smoking.

The day after we came back, myself and a few girlfriends - all now in our 30s and (shhh) 40s - went to a local 80s night, where Limahl (he of Kajagoogoo fame) and various other artistes transported us back to our youth, along with a crowd of other similarly middle-aged people.

I tried explaining all of this to my daughters, whose blank incomprehension finally made me laugh. The thing is, nostalgia is completely lost on the young. Try telling a six year old that there were only 3 television channels and no tv in the mornings when you were young - or that nobody had mobile phones, and music came on giant black discs. The look of withering pity and incomprehension is enough to make you sob into your snakebite and black...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and put my legwarmers on.

In Need of Perspective

We watched Ratatouille with the kids at the weekend. There’s a scene towards the end, where the big restaurant critic comes to dine at the restaurant. “What can I get you”, asks the waiter. “Perspective” replies the critic.

If only it were so easy to order perspective like that. I could do with some of it myself right now. I find myself strangely down with no apparent reason. I’ve written before about my tendency to internalise. I’ve never been a big “sharer”, preferring to withdraw into my little shell until the mood passes.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that when, or if, something eventually gives, it can come as a complete shock to those around me, who had no idea of the thoughts or feelings that have been welling up over time. Case in point; bursting into tears when my husband came home last night. I couldn't even really tell him what was wrong. The truth is, I don’t even know why I am feeling sorry for myself at the moment – I certainly have nothing at all to complain about. 

I heard a story recently of a friend of a friend of such anguish and heartbreak; involving a severely disabled child, broken homes, domestic abuse that really made me think about perspective, and my seeming lack of it. To paraphrase and garble that famous saying beloved of all parents; I can’t believe I’m stressing about not finding a holiday when there are children starving in Africa.

Today, I’d like a healthy dose of Perspective please. With a side order of Count Your Blessings.

Camping for Beginners

Having just come back from a weekend's camping in Dorset, I thought I would share some helpful tips - more for myself if I ever decide to do it again than for anyone else! (Yes, I'm a total novice when it comes to camping - or at least I was. Now that I have spent 2 nights in a tent, I am of course a pro that can dish out advice to all and sundry):

1) Don't attempt your first camping trip alone. It certainly helps to go with seasoned campers. That way you can steal half their equipment, have them cook all the food, and generally look a bit less clueless about the whole thing as you simply copy what they do.

2) Borrow as much equipment as possible. It certainly helps if you have lovely friends that are willing to lend you a tent!

3) Make sure you have enough alcohol. Without fail, every person I mentioned our camping trip to said pretty much the same thing: Drink Your Way Through It. (This was after they had initially stopped laughing and looked at me with a dubious face, saying: "I didn't really have you down as a camper..."). These were our supplies for the first night:

(Yes, we had to go and buy more on the second day! Oh, and I should probably mention there were only 7 adults...)

4) Avoid the weekend of your 10th wedding anniversary if possible. A weekend in a 5-star hotel with spa facilities is generally more appropriate.

5) Check the state of all equipment before leaving. Do not laugh at the distress of one of your tent mates when their camping chair collapses the week before you go. You are guaranteed that this will happen to you on your first evening.

6) Camping chairs do not tend to stay together very well with cable ties

7) Book good weather. This is crucial. The thought of setting up and dismantling a tent in the rain fills me with horror. Thankfully it's not something I had to experience, as the weather was absolutely glorious!

8) No matter how warm it is in the day, you will still need an arctic sleeping bag. This is the countryside - all those open spaces and clear skies make for cold nights. Brrr....

9) If one of your party brings with them a brand new, still in the box, state of the art Vango Airbeam tent, make sure they do not inflate to more than 3psi, otherwise the tent that impressed everyone so much by inflating in 5 minutes will look a little less impressive when one of the beams pops and the tent deflates in the middle...

10) Most important of all - relax and have a good time. Oh, and try to drown out the cries of "I don't want to go home" from the kids. Otherwise, who knows, you might even have to do it again...and that would never do...

Pyjamas or...errr.... Bananas...?

source

Several things recently have got me musing over what people do wear in bed...firstly, the lovely Julie over at Kailexness wrote a post asking if there was Sex After Children (yes! hurrah!), and suggested sleeping naked as an easy way to intimacy. Secondly I was catching up with one of my many guilty pleasures in the trash TV stakes, 'Brothers and Sisters'. I won't bore those of you who don't follow the Walker family shenanigans with too much detail, but suffice to say, this particular episode seemed to involve a lot of them getting out of bed for some reason. It was interesting to see how what each character appeared to wear in bed reflected either their personality, or the state of their relationship.

I'll hold my hand up at this point and declare that, while I do possess a silly amount of frilly negligée type things, I am generally a 'comfort over style' kind of girl when it comes to bed wear. For starters, we live in a Victorian house that realistically has quite a way to go in the insulation stakes, and if there is one thing I detest it is Being Cold - in bed or out of it. I'm therefore definitely a cosy bedwear fan - however, even when the temperatures climb drastically, I still prefer to wear a little slip of something. Apart from anything else, I've always been a huge fan of leaving something to the imagination...

I do recognise, however, that it is very much a personal preference, as well as a practical consideration. A colleague of mine generally packs pyjamas only when going on trips, as they have a slight phobia of being caught out in case of a hotel fire alarm. I don't know whether this fear is based on a previous negative experience, or whether it is just sensible precautions, but it does seem a perfectly prudent thing to do. The thought of finding yourself starkers in a hotel car park in the middle of the night does not seem appealing to anyone but the most fervent exhibitionist.

Therefore, as I'm generally nosy, I'm going to open this up with a little poll (and fingers crossed that I have done this correctly!!), so go on, tell me...: 

What do you wear in bed?