Today I have been packing.
This is because tomorrow we are going on holiday.
We are going to go to Blackpool for three whole days. Four really, if you count the travelling. We are going to set off when we get organised tomorrow and we are going to arrive back at some time before work in Friday, so it is going to be a real holiday.
Three days of cycling and doughnuts and candy floss and sand. We are going to be all together and doing seaside things, which is just the best thing in the world, if only Numbers One and Two Daughters could come as well.
We are very happy, but also a bit sad about it, because of course we haven’t finished the camper van, so we are staying in an hotel, which will be all very lovely, but not as lovely as our own little snail-house. That will have to wait until next time.
All the same, I am so excited I can hardly wait.
You won’t be at all surprised to hear that we haven’t managed to save up any money at all. This is because we waste too much money on boring things like putting diesel in the taxis and buying bread and cheese and coffee. This means that it is going to be a low-budget holiday, but none of us care. We have paid for the hotel, and the fuel to get there, and I believe that the rest of it is the exact reason why God created credit cards.
Mark went over to the farm to fix all of our bicycles, which haven’t been used much since the last time we went to Blackpool. This is because the Lake District has got too many hills for going cycling, at least if you are me, so they stay tied to the back of the camper van awaiting visits to flat places.
They had been there for ages and needed tyres blowing up and chains knitting back together and smearing with new oil, and similar restorative procedures, and also he had got to see if he could fit them all into the back of a taxi, because of not having a camper van at present.
I stayed at home and packed. This meant spending the day clutching scraps of paper with things like ‘fl.flops & swim stuff’ scribbled on them as aids to my elderly failing memory, and running up and down the stairs with piles of underwear.
By the time Mark got back I had got both a mess and a headache, and he had got a taxi full of bicycles. It is going to take some creative packing tomorrow to fit four bicycles, a massive suitcase, all of our ice skates and everybody’s own personal rucksack full of useful stuff like books and computers and SpiderMan and glasses and toothpicks into the car.
Then as well as the four of us there are coats and umbrellas and spare shoes and all the rest of the things that you can’t possibly leave behind. I can tell you that it isn’t at all easy to be going on holiday without our own large truck, I don’t know how people do it for a whole week.
I am relieved to announce that we have decided not to take the dogs. The hotel in which we are staying admits dogs, but probably not ten leaky ones, so we are leaving them in the care of Number Two Daughter, which she has very kindly agreed to see to in our absence.
We are working tonight, and then setting off in the morning, or at least in the early afternoon, depending how long it takes us to become awake and on the outside of enough coffee.
I am in my taxi now, and have got terrible gate fever.
Not long to wait now.
The sun shone today. Mark took the picture from his taxi at work this evening. I can’t wait to get away from it all.
