John in Wales is going away for the weekend and wrote about the number of friends who are stepping in to look after things. It struck a chord with several of his readers as the comments show and it certainly did here too. Here is the link.
My mother lived next door in the annexe for fifteen years. For a number of those years, and on and off for some of the rest, she looked after herself, but she never liked being on her own overnight – not that she minded being alone in the bungalow, but she didn’t like the feeling that the big house next door was unoccupied. In addition, Russell didn’t really like being away from his beloved home and, at the least, wanted to know it wasn’t empty. And then there were the dogs. So we needed a house/Grandma/dog sitter.
At this time of the year, the greenhouses needed daily watering, the veg garden needed some watering and vegetables needed picking every day. This took at least an hour a day. So a garden-sitter was required.
Then there were the bantams that are fed three times a day and let out and shut up morning and evening. Chicken-sitter. Try saying it quickly several times.
Fortunately, though the dogs loved a walk, it wasn’t really necessary as there’s plenty of room for them and they never bothered a stray bantam, unlike Ben now, so at least we didn’t have to consider a dog walker.
The last family holiday we had was a visit to Brittany twenty years ago. Ronan had just finished at the village school and was going on to the middle school in September. He’d just had chickenpox and his hair was wildly curly and in need of a wash – but that’s another story.
After that, we had a few shortish trips away in this country, with or without the children (Weeza and Al were grown up by then, of course), but it all seemed too much effort to plan and book a proper holiday. I wanted one to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and said to my husband that it was all I wanted – no need for presents or a party – he could hardly say no and put a brave face on it, so I renewed his passport. But then my mother’s terminal cancer was diagnosed, so we abandoned that idea entirely, and in fact she died just about the time I’d planned that we’d be away.
That’s because you’re using some other html than that I suggested to you for links.
‘Title’ means something totally different methinks.
Darling, there is a set-up for links which isn’t working properly, so Ronan needs to see what’s wrong to be able to put it right. He assures me I shouldn’t have to use html, but there’s evidently a glitch. I’ll mention it when i see him tomorrow.
Good morning Z. I seem to be having no problem leaving comments. Ref going away, I sort of know how Russell feels. I quite like going away, but it’s always a real pleasure to get home.
The last ‘holiday’ I went on was in 2006 and that was to Turkey and not a resounding success.
My trips to Trinidad, being family fraught I never count as such.
We tend to do short breaks rather than a block of time away or staycations.
I’m fond of staycations.
Aha, I see your tech support has removed the offending “title” bit, but also the “target=”_blank” bit that auto-opens links in new pages. Just saying…
I take the view that if God had meant us to fly, He would have made the mountains out of rubber. This does limit us a bit in terms of holiday destinations, however we do like to get away somewhere at least twice a year.
Regarding your technical issue, I think there may be a stack error in the donkey grobbler as it points to the dubrie firkin.
HTML stands for “Have To get out More”.
I used to travel the globe for a living so not flying is a lovely feeling. And working from home is a bit of a continuous holiday .
A smug git writes….
I’ll come back to holidays – yes, I know what you mean.
It’s a matter of ticking a box, BW. He’s explained it all to me, hope I’ll get it right next time. Sir B has it in a nutshell.
My stepfather did a lot of globetrotting in his job, he was glad to holiday in this country too, Rog.
The last family holiday was 20 years ago? That’s a shame. Mind you, when I think of my own family holidays in my long-distant childhood, they could be as frustrating and infuriating as they were exciting and enjoyable. If we all wanted to do different things, there would be colossal arguments and sulking and tantrums….
We went away for almost four weeks and had to enlist garden waterers, house sitters and pet-sittters, in shifts. It was a nightmare of lists and key-cutting. I never want to do it again. I prefer short breaks.
I may have trouble commenting, I use inprivate and the password wordpress made you use won’t be stored, it is completely unmemorable and every time I want tyo comment i shall have to hunt through older and older emails to copy and paste it.
You can change your password on your profile, Jane – I’ll sort it out for you and have you sent a new one which you can change to something you like, but I’m frankly drunk right now, so it wouldn’t be a good idea,
My older two children were grown up by then, Nick, we were getting past the stage of family holidays. Though we didn’t take enough of them, in truth. I don’t remember any quarrels on holiday though.
Right, I’m sober now, Jane (actually, I was more tired than drunk I think). I’ll email you explaining what to do to get a password you can remember. I’m sorry about it, but I’m getting spammers registering and I’m not giving them the opportunity to comment.