I don’t really do holidays.  I don’t have the knack of that much forward planning.  It might be because growing up, we didn’t have family holidays.  You know, where Mum, Dad and kids go away for 2 weeks every year.  We did that 4 times.  All of them a nightmare, let me count the ways:

1) Norfolk – Camping

Why? No-where to plug in her hairdryer, no fridge for ice to put in the gin.  Mum was not amused, my Dad was irritable and my brother managed to stick his hand in a fruit machine, it got stuck, it was nasty, I think there may have been a trip to A&E.

2) Devon – Don’t smack your lips

Notable for Dad being irritable (apparently Ben and I were noisy eaters) and leaving us in the car, on a beach, as the tide came in (Mum couldn’t drive).  Fun.  Also I got sunburnt, really, really sunburnt….

3) Mallorca – We nearly died

Grandad came. Dad forgot that they drive on the other side of the road, he remembered as the lorry came towards us.  Grandad nearly had a heart atttack. Dad was irritable.

4) Cornwall – The triumph of hope over experience

There had been a gap of 10 years or so, I was 16, Ben was 14. Dad was irritable.  I think we must have listened to the Greatest Hits of Don McLean, a thousand times, also The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and more worryingly, Rod Stewart.

I did go on holidays though, I went on PGL holidays every summer, school trips, Ireland with my aunt a couple of times, summer camp, so it wasn’t a holiday deprived childhood.

As an adult, I just never got around to sorting out a holiday.  It was almost as if, I thought that holidays weren’t something that grown-ups did.  And when I did go away, I didn’t get excited about it in the same way my friends did all that counting the ‘sleeps’ etc.

This year, though I am going on a Holiday, with a captial H.  I am going to see Josephine in the Cote d’Ivoire, in May.  Tickets have been booked, I’m off to have a Yellow Fever injection in a couple of weeks and all I have to do now is apply for a visa.

And I am quite excited, not counting the days excited, but getting close.  I might have to go a bake a cake to celebrate…