Saturday 10 May 2008

Holiday Mad

No sooner have my feet touched the ground from Turkey, than my hubby has flown off with his fellow golfers, including my Dad, to Belek, just a little bit further east along the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Meanwhile the kids' heads are spinning - as one parent flies in another flies out. It's a bit like March of the Penguins at the moment. Although Penguins don't fly of course.

Not only that, but when hubby gets back it'll only be another week and a bit before we all head off together to France for a week Eurocamping. When will I learn that going on holiday is not just about the actual week that you're away, it's also the week before to get ready, then the week after to recover and get back to reality? The month of May is looking like a write-off with regards to doing anything other than opening and closing suitcases.

However, nothing could be further from the truth! May is still so much more than an open and shut case. (Groan - sorry.) There's still loads happening in May. My Dad's 65th birthday, our daughter's fifth birthday party, my sister-in-law's birthday, two bank holidays, AND, last but by no means least, all the excitement of the Swindon Literature Festival, which started on May 5th, and which promises an interesting schedule for the week ahead. Add to this my fourth golf medal competition, plus my first singles knockout match, and I've no idea how on earth I'm going to fit everything in. At this rate I'm not surprised we used to have May Week in June at college - there simply weren't enough days in May to accommodate all the events.

I shall be posting my thoughts about the things I hear over the next week at the Lit Fest. I've marked my diary with all sorts of things from self-help in Shakespeare to druidry and mathematical philosophy. A glutton for punishment I am. Sometimes I think I should have gone to university at my present time of life, rather than at 19. Maybe I would have taken it all a lot more seriously, instead of spending the majority of my time looking for a husband, or, at the very least, "possible snogs".

One thing's for sure - we've certainly managed to keep up the holiday habit from our university days. It was the same there - no sooner had we unpacked all our cool posters and finally discovered the most satisfying configuration for them around the room, in a way that would look most impressive to the discerning eye of whomever we might invite round for coffee and "possible snogs", than it was time to pull them all down again, taking care not to leave scrappy pieces of Blu-tac all over the place.

So I concede this penchant for holiday madness, and cramming as much as possible into a single month - even shamelessly stealing an entire week from the following month because there aren't enough weeks available in the given month to do everything required - is a product of my rather privileged education. How on earth we're meant to achieve anything with said education is quite another question - and one that would surely drive me mad, if I had time to think about it.

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