I've been stranded in the south of England

... and now I'm stranded in school holiday hell...

Hello, remember me? I’m that woman whose newsletter you subscribed to, but now she keeps going MIA, and you’re starting to wonder why you’re still here. Sorry. I’m starting to wonder why you’re still here too, tbh. In my defense, though, I didn’t actually intend to disappear for so long this time, it’s just that… well, as the title says, I’ve been stranded in the South of England. Yes.

The south of England

So, as some of you might recall, we normally head to Kent around this time every year, to visit our family there. This year, the trip coincided with my brother-in-law’s 60th birthday, and he’d decided to throw a huge party to celebrate, so there were around 20 family members all staying in the same house at one point, and when I tell you it was memorable, I mean, “Our nephew proposed to his girlfriend on the beach one day with all of us there¹, then his mum fell at St. Pancras on the way back to Scotland and broke her ankle.”

It was that kind of ‘memorable’. And, somewhere in between these two events, our car broke down, leaving us stuck in the south of England until it could be fixed.

Of course, given that my poor sister-in-law was in hospital at that point having surgery to repair her shattered ankle, the car was the least of our worries. It did, however, stop us getting home for a while (We could’ve taken the train, obviously, but then we’d have been stuck at home with no car, and would’ve had to go back for it at some point, so we decided to just stay put…), and that’s why there’s been no newsletter for a couple of weeks.

But now we’re back, and, honestly, I kind of wish we weren’t, because we still have the rest of the school holidays to get through, and I’m not gonna lie, I feel like it’s probably going to destroy me.

The house is trashed. It’s raining non-stop. Everyone’s bored, and cranky, and claustrophobic. There are kids here who aren’t mine, but who never seem to go home, and whose parents never return the favor by having Max over for a bit, so it’s basically impossible to work, or do much of anything, really, except endlessly tidy the same things, and count down the days until school goes back.

This is not the kind of parent I thought I would be. I always used to listen to people talking about how they couldn’t wait for the school holidays to be over, and think, “Wow, why did they even HAVE kids if they didn’t want to spend time with them? I would NEVER be like that!”

<hollow laugh>

The thing is, though, it’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my child. It’s never that. It’s just that, well, I need to work. Like most people I know, I just can’t afford to take 6 weeks’ holiday every summer, as much as I’d like to. And so, instead of being this golden, idyllic time filled with fun and adventure, the summer holidays have become one more thing to feel guilty about, basically, because I’m not working OR spending quality time with my child, and three people unsubscribed from my newsletter while I was gone.

But we move. Well, I mean I don’t, really, but I’m trying. And, as of tonight, there are only 8 days left until the end of the ‘holidays’, at which point we’ll be able to leave the chaos behind, get back into some kind of a routine that works for us, and… just get our heads above water, basically. Or, at least, I hope so.

Until then, a huge thank you to everyone who’s stuck with me this summer, even though I haven’t been around nearly as much as usual: I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support!

1. She said yes. It was lovely. I cried.