jonathan.beckett@gmail.com

Threading the vacation through the eye of a broken needle

Yes, the title is crypticbut all will become clear if you continue to read. I thought about distilling our adventures down to a list of bullets, but then realise it would curtail the temptation to record endless foaming invective about the most minor of bumps along our vacation road.

Where to start ?Last Friday morning we departed our home, headed towards the south coast. Departing took the best part of 18 hoursafter nearly pulling each other's hair out while attempting to wash clothes and pack bagsmade more complicated by our children inviting half the street round, or vanishing at moments they were required. After placing a suitable amount of dynamite underneath our eldest daughter's bed, we finally set off, and launched intocombat with the “I'm bored” brigade in the back of the car.

We were only heading to the south coasttwo hours away. You would have thought we were heading to the other side of the known world (no, seriouslyif you had seen how much crap we had packed in the car, you really would).

I gambled rather foolishly in my packing, in the way parents do when 99% of the car is filled with everything required to run a holiday park single handed, and the remaining 1% is for everything you might want to take for yourself. One pair of jeans. Two pairs of shorts. Five t-shirts. Two shirts you get the idea. Minimal in the extreme. The weather gods smiled on me this time.

The one thing none of us had counted on, and made no difference to anybody other than myself, was breaking a toe on the first day of the holiday, and wrenching the ligaments connecting several other toes. I did it while being the old parent out with the kids paddling, and the only parent with no foot protection (because I come last on just about ever list ever written by anybody).

I climbed out of the sea and the kids raced off to tell my other half. Those few seconds of concern from the kids were the only concern I saw from anybody all holiday. I didn't tell anybody how much it hurt because I didn't want to ruin anything for them. The fact that my foot blew up inside a few hours and a few toes went purple was kind of hidden by tape (I taped the toe to the one next to it), and just getting on with everything.

While everybody else marched here, there, and everywhere for the remainder of the holiday, I followed along like an old manat my own pace, limping somewhat, and figuring out how best to walk without it hurting too much. This included; Walking to the holiday park beach and back several times (a mile each way) Walking the length of the promenade and back at Weymouth (about a mile each way) Walking around all day at the Weymouth Sealife Park (no idea how many miles) Walking around all day at a Monkey sanctuary (no idea how many miles) Walking from our caravan to the restaurant, casino, and food halls countless timesOf course I didn't look up any information on the NHS website until after I had done half of these route marchesand discovered I should have kept off it for several days, and put ice on it every few hours. AhemThe toe kind of ruined a lot of the holiday for me, but the younger children had more fun than you could shake a many pointed stick at. This was probably the last year they would really enjoy a seaside holiday camp vacation, and we tried to let them do as much as we couldplaying in the pool, attending parties with 7ft tall “characters”, eating breakfast with the 7ft characters, watching the talent show, playing crazy golf, learning rock climbing, being flung in the air on bungees, and various other madcap pursuits.

The one huge downer throughout the holiday was the relationship between our eldest daughter, and my other half hitting it's lowest ebb so far. They are polar opposites in all sorts of ways, and it showed itself pretty spectacularly throughout the first few days. By the third day of the holiday our eldest had left the caravan once, and was pretty much on hunger strike. As always seems to be the case, I became the peacemaker, which of course then made me an enemy too. Thankfully the last few days calmed down significantlyI should work at the United Nations or something.

The holiday wasn't a total losswe did have a couple of great days on the beach towards the end, where we all went in the sea, and the girls managed to avoid going nuclear for a few hours at a time. On the way home we stopped at Stonehenge (yes, really). I had never visited it before, so it was entirely new to me. We all had radio guides to wander around the site with, and they were unexpectedly greator at least they were if you used them. Our eldest pointedly refused to listen, and stood as far away from us as possible for the hour we were there. When I finally caught up with her and gave her a hug she murmered “yeah, right, lets stand round in the wind for an hour looking at a bunch of rocks” I burst out laughing and she half smiled.

So we are home (via a short stop at Stonehenge en-route to break the trip up). I am looking forward to a weekend of clearing the garden, washing clothes, and dreading going back to work. I know what I'm going back to, so fully expect to find me escaping to the internet in the early hours over the next few evenings.