We are on holiday.
We are having the most fantastic, glorious, wonderful time ever.
Number One Daughter and her family popped round this morning as we were getting ready to go, and helped Mark stuff the car full of bicycles: and we had coffee and set off into the morning sunshine.
It is hot. It is really hot. It is sunny and warm and gorgeous, and we are mopping up Vitamin D like mad.
We put the Sherman Brothers CD on the car stereo and turned it up and sang along all the way, a deafening rendition of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, until we were yelling and laughing, and somebody saw the Tower.
We have got a very nice hotel room, right at the top of the hotel, which turned out to have an ace view of the sunset. I am in it now, with all the happiness of crisp white sheets and fluffy white towels and the smug knowledge that somebody else is going to hoover the sand up in the morning.
Once we had unpacked Mark screwed the bicycles back together and we sailed off down the prom. I can’t say how lovely it was, apart from missing the dogs, who like to gallop along next to us. It was hot and bright, and the beach was full.
We looked at things and bought some sun lotion and ate doughnuts. We played the family Blackpool Doughnut Challenge, where the person who can eat a whole doughnut without licking the sugar off their lips is pronounced the winner. It is always Lucy. I am always last. Oliver ate half of his doughnut and then tried to kiss everybody.
After that Oliver went on a bouncy castle and Mark pulled his hat over his face and nodded off in the sunshine.
As the sun was setting we went for a walk on the beach, at which we played the other family beach game where you are not allowed to cross lines drawn in the sand, and the game is to try and draw circles around one another without each other noticing. This is always noisy and sometimes violent.
We went for a paddle as the sun was sinking down and the tide rolled sleepily in. The children got soaked and Mark kissed me romantically in the surf, so the children made sick noises and splashed us, after which we all had to go back to the hotel and change.
The day ended with hot chocolate in the bar, and we retreated to the bedroom to our end of day entertainment, which was planned to be a family viewing of a television series called A Game Of Thrones. Mark and I have seen these before, but the children haven’t, so we watched the first episode and then spent half an hour trying to explain who was related to whom, and who wanted to be king and why, until Oliver got bored and wanted to go to bed.
We are all going to bed.
We are exhausted and pink with the sun and the wind. We are aching rather satisfyingly from cycling and feeling mildly over fed. Our main plan of activity for the holiday was to eat as much as we possibly could, but when we got to it our stomachs let us down, we have had some doughnuts and some garlic bread and some mildly acidic red wine, and we are as full as ticks on a dog.
I am about as happy as I think it is possible to be in this world.
Goodnight.
