Back to Reality
After a week of walking headland footpaths, eating pub lunches, building sandcastles, and paddling in the surf, we finally arrived home late yesterday evening. Back to reality. Back to the real world. Back to mad scrambles to make breakfasts, packed lunches, arm-twisting teenagers into doing their homework, and back to the mountain of chores.
The cats succeeded in providing exactly the situation we worried about on our return. Despite shutting them from every room, they had filled the house with fleas – aided by incredibly hot temperatures while we were away. 18 hours after returning we are slowly winning the battle – armed with numerous sprays, mops, buckets, hoovers, and elbow-grease. Now we just need to get through the colossal clothes washing mountain.
While away, I didn't touch a computer at all. My Dad has an insane computer, with an Occulus Rift virtual reality headset, and half of a real aircraft cockpit attached to it – and yes, we took turns to sit with the headset on and marvel at the various demonstrations – landing on the moon, sitting on the bottom of the ocean, and so on – but I was never really tempted to open a browser and jump down the internet rabbit hole – I spent the week talking to my parents, visiting places, reading books, and doing little else. I kept up with email on my phone, but didn't reply to anything.
While wandering the footpaths of Heligan, Antony House, Looe, Polperro and Talland over the last week, it has occured to me just how much I have come to dislike people in general. I deliberately stopped on several walks in order for people nearby to just be further away from me. One day I spent ten minutes walking within earshot of two women who seemed far more interested in talking about the programmes on their washing machines than the wonderful country gardens they were walking through. Another day while walking into a small fishing village I passed a family who's entire topic of conversation seemed to be centered around how much further the shops were from the car park.
I'm not sure if I expected to, but I didn't “miss” blogging at all. I'm not sure if it means anything, and I'm not going to dwell on it – I just thought it interesting.