Slave to the Rhythm

It may not be obvious to the casual blogreader but I have not really had a holiday this year.  There were a bunch of luxurious half-days when one family was away and then the other, but apart from that it's been pretty flat out since January. 

In my childhood, when everything was in black and white and you wore jumpers all year round, holidays were not all that, anyway.  We had that two weeks every year, last week in July, first week in August, when we went unbooked to some seaside and drove round the coast until finally finding a B&B with a vacancy.  This was one of the few times my mother would use my father's first name.  You'd be surprised how much irritation, despair and contempt one word could express.

Holidays were the only time they really spent together and they were mostly characterised by embarrassment and a sort of public hissing.  And loathsome Victorian toilets on another floor.  Although Dorset was really nice.  Except when I thought I'd lost them at Chapman's Pool and caused a small landslip by screaming.  And that time when I was put in an attic room and everything rattled so much in the wind I started screaming.

This lack of holiday must be cream-crackering on some level though.  At weekends I just sleeeeep.  It seems a mournful waste of weekend but this creaky old body is telling me something. 

Anyway, in your first year of employment in Belgium, you don't get holiday pay.  I will however be taking a day off in October for The Big Family Wedding in Yorkshire.  It will be my first time staying in a Travelodge.