Holidays

Coastal walk

Princess Sleepyhead swimming

How slowly they come up on us and how quickly they go! And after they've gone I always wonder whether it was all real. It's that old psychological maybe-I'm-the-only-real-person-and-all-the-rest-is-a-figment-of-my-imagination thing. Hard to imagine that those other worlds I've experienced are real, and that right now people are enjoying them just as I was a week ago. Much easier to imagine the relentless heat I'm now mired in!

Princess Sleepyhead enjoys a boat trip

How people spend their holidays is interesting. Some like to laze around and do nothing. Others are constantly on the go. I was surprised when Princess Sleepyhead came back from Vietnam and said that she'd wanted to go to the Vietcong caves but was outvoted because most of the others wanted to go shopping. In between treks and their community project, they shopped, shopped, shopped. I can't imagine anything worse. I have an aversion to shopping, but especially when I can be out and about with my camera!

Sir Talkalot rockclimbing

The Gadget Man is an on-the-go man and champs at the bit if everyone is not up super-early and ready to go. As none of the rest of us are morning people, this can present problems. I can be ready at 9, even 8 if I have to, but the kids are another matter. PS decided this year that she was going to stay in her favourite spot -- bed -- for as long as possible, and whenever this made TGM frustrated and, at times, furious I told him to chill out -- that it was her holiday too, and that if she wanted to spend it lazing around, reading, she was entitled to. That didn't mean we all had to waste time waiting for her, but that she had a choice: to come or to stay. Often she chose to stay. In the evenings, she would talk about how much she'd enjoyed treks in Vietnam, and how we should do more family hiking, but while we were out hiking she was home with her book. (Now, I would've been happy if this were one of her novels she has to read for school, but of course it wasn't.)

Boogie boarding

I love sightseeing, The Gadget Man loves hiking, and the kids love any sort of adventurous activities. So as well as having fun on their boogie boards, this time they got to have a surfing lesson. They wanted more, but the lessons were booked out, so after that we hired boards and wetsuits. (PS had ripped all the skin of her hands trying to get the wetsuit on during her lesson, and in the end had to forego a suit that was too small.)

Heading out to try surfing

Sir Talkalot about to stand up!

Of course, this blog wouldn't be called Chaotic Life if we didn't have the type of holidays where something at least goes wrong. (And the kids are still talking about the Christmas Day day out a few years ago where I had my leg injected with two sorts of acid (from a tree), and one kid fell off an embankment and the other got smashed by the sea into the same embankment, leading me to spend two hours picking shell grit out from under their skins.) This year it was Sir Talkalot's turn: seems he lost his joust with coral!

The results of Sir Talkalot's swimming adventures