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On holiday…hurray
We’re on holiday in Spain for half term. My partner is from Barcelona, which makes for very good holidays! Of course, you have to get there first. This involves lots of extra work preparing for being off work for a week. I spent most of last week finishing off different jobs into the small hours and having technological problems, for instance, I did one editing project and finished it at just after Jonathan Ross ended on Friday night only to find the b….rd disc didn´t work so I couldn´t save it so had to spend Saturday trying to find a way round the problem. The plane left on Saturday afternoon at 5. There is no shop for miles near us that sells computer stuff like memory sticks. That´s the joy of living in the country.
In theory the flight to Spain is easy…it´s just two hours and a bit, but with three small people, those two hours can seem much, much longer. Especially since they don´t sleep at all during the flight and I am not that good at flying…during the going up and coming down bits I have to be reading a book and it must not mention death in the bit I am reading or we are all doomed. Unfortunately, I had flicked to the obituaries page of the newspaper I was reading when we started our descent. I then had to swap quickly for the how and why book of shapes. Much safer. No talk of death there, only triangles and squashed squares.
Anyway, we have been having a great time. The only down side was when I put the weekly rail pass in my pocket with a wet wipe and corrupted it, but only after I had got through the barrier. My partner looked very pissed off. Hippy daughter turned to me and said ´Mummy, I think I know what daddy is thinking in his head. Is it F-U-C-K?´ I said I thought that was slightly mistaken. I think he was thinking ´F-U-C-K-I-N-G M-A-N-D-Y´. This indeed proved accurate. Relationships on holiday can be a good thing, but relationships on holiday with three children and very little sleep are not a recipe made in heaven. The good thing is you are so tired that the moments of tension rarely rise too high above the surface because you have more or less moved on about 10 minutes later after a round of questions about when we are going home [toddler daughter, repeated ad infinitum throughout the week], various loony questions about God and Santa [bonkers daughter] and intense questions about Spanish history [hippy daughter].
That night the girls…all sleeping in one room…stayed up all night chatting about stuff. I love to listen in. It is great entertainment. Hippy daughter and the mad one were talking about all the Mandys they knew while toddler girl kept pìping up with ´can we sing fabios?´. This is a reference to her all time favourite film, High School the Musical Two and its song ‘Fabulous’ sung by Sharpay. She is the biggest fan…she even has Troy socks. The other two have had enough. I have had enough. The cat has had enough. This was followed by a full commentary on Sharpay´s love life. Toddler one is very concerned. She managed to smuggle the dvd in with her. The others are not impressed. Thank goodness the weather is good and we can escape to the beach.
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