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.