Writing

I am conscious that for many people blogging is a writing thing. I write (or at least draft) a lot - pages and pages of technical documents; long letters of advice; emails; notes; reports. I do it all day (and sometime all night) long. None of it has any literary merit! I enjoy the writing on the blogs I read - it is funny; moving; thoughtful; entertaining; informative. People frequently take care to select a subject and write about it in a way which will make the reader want to read it - not always but mostly. Last week I had to write a letter to a friend whose child had died suddenly overnight - how do you find anything sensible to say?

...and back to work

We came back from holiday today. We sort of came back from holiday last week as well, but only for long enough to identify a problem with our electricity, cut the grass and go away again. We have had a lovely time. Sardinia was beautiful. We stayed in a place we'd stayed in before and the sun shone and the food was fantastic - that's about where our holiday needs end provided we have enough books. Last week we were in Northumberland and while the weather was (at best!) mixed we had a great time. We visited Flodden Field ("field" being the operative word) one of the few historic places we hadn't visited in North Northumberland in spite of driving past it almost weekly; went to the Harry Potter film in Newcastle; played bad golf; walked on the beach; collected cowries (a family obsession); had visitors to stay; and had a really good time last night at the Stars of the 80's concert at Alnwick notwithstanding (in fact almost as a result of) the weather - Ooh Heaven is a Place on Earth.

Tomorrow we go back to work. I have had a deliberate policy of not being copied into emails to avoid the temptation to look a them. I find holidays deeply unsettling. They give me a glimpse of how life could be better (not that its strictly bad) and then chuck me back to where I was a week or fortnight before. I live so much better on holiday - I eat properly, I vaguely exercise and I have time. Almost more than ever I feel a need to do something about it - to simplify my life and make it better for us all. The only thing that seems to stop me is a vague fear of change and some people don't have the luxury of choosing to change. I suspect we do and should.

Summer Holidays

We took our daughter ski-ing when she was one. We went with a group of friends to a chalet. Not the chalet we had booked - it had burned down. We all had one year olds. Ours was sick first. Not badly sick - just sick enough that you wouldn't want to leave her with someone else. We stayed with her and the babysitting rota (we booked too late to organise child care) devolved entirely to us. By then she had infected the others. We didn't have a terrible time but we did swear she would next go abroad on the school trip. We have since relented and so we are off to Sardinia next week-end assuming the Scottish airports are not off limits. I love being on holiday but dread the rush to get away, the travelling and the return to hundreds of emails. I particularly love the fact that we all want to go, the general excitement of going somewhere else and that for a whole week we can do absolutely nothing but eat, drink, read rubbish and swim. I find holiday a stark contrast with the bad lifestyle I seem generally to adopt. Every year I come back and tell myself there is a happy medium between overwork, over eating bad food and no exercise and holidays, but I seem to lack either the ability or, ultimately the will, to find it. We are spending our second week in Northumberland - last year it was hotter than our week in Sardinia: at present this year looks like a further swimming opportunity across fields of mud! With blind confidence I have booked tickets for the Picnic in the Park concert at Alnwick to re-live the days of my youth. I'm sure the sun will be out before too long.