In which Scroobious states the obvious

Summer is more fun when you’re on holiday.

In an unprecedented synchronicity of happy things, last week saw me on leave, Beloved on leave, other commitments cleared away in the first half of the week (mostly) and *gasp!* the tangible start of summer.

This was good. We spent a day (and a fair amount of poondz) making Beloved dizzy, nauseous and headachey, and then all better, and then dizzy some more. My idea of a good, good time. (Although ideally less of the headache and more of the dizzy.) And we spent a couple of days in the mellow goldenness of Bath – inspecting Austen settings, stomping around hilltops, dallying in boats and so on. Terribly pretty, Bath, but where’s the beach? Or mountain? Surely it should have at least one of those?*

And all this happened in lovely, balmy sunshine – the first time I have ever holidayed in the UK in good weather**. Getting increasingly balmy as the week progressed, really. It was great while pootling about on the river, but not so much back in London, trying to do some work. Thank goodness it started raining again, eh?

Cars are useful.

Pre-Bath, we picked up a smart little toy that totally didn’t belong to us. (Honest, mum, it just followed me home!) Frances, kind soul, took us to Ikea and back within about two hours.*** And to the garden centre, where we stocked up on a bunch of plants**** and bark chips and cowshit. It was all so easy. Most of the time I don’t miss having a car at all – parking, petrol, maintenance, insurance, traffic, no thanks – but, well… it were nice while it lasted.

A woman’s work is never done.

So I’ve just had a week’s leave, of which only three days in total were actual holiday. I should be all caught up. I should have a glistening clean house, an excitingly worked over garden*****, an empty desk, a lot of big ticks on my to-do list.

Not so much. (Although the garden’s not doing too badly. Yay rain!)

And because I can never bring myself to say no to work, and because everyone in the whole world seems to want to come to Londonville at the same time, it’s going to be, like, the middle of July before I have a chance to get ahead.

*Sighs self-pityingly.*

Exercise is hard.

That 10km run I signed up for is rapidly approaching. Tonight I’m doing a 5km as some kind of twisted test run. Now, I was doing very nicely with my training for quite a while, but the past few weeks have been… busy. It’s been hard to keep it up. I’m honestly not sure I can run for even 5km. Hours of gardening, yes, trekking over hills, fine, I’ve done plenty of that, but running is a bit more of a challenge.

This is me girding my loins for public humiliation.

[Insert mental image here.]
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* My homesick is coming out in funny ways and with increasing frequency.
** This might have something to do with our habit of taking off without much planning, whenever we suddenly have a few days. In, er, November, say, or February…
*** I do expect you to be impressed at this point that we were even able to get out of the shop within two hours. Seriously. We made it out with just the three things we went in for (plus, er, one thing that wasn’t on the list, but was on a mental problem-to-be-solved list, so that’s okay). It was sale week and everything. We beat the Ikea quicksand. Applause, please.
**** Which are only going to die within a couple of weeks, but a girl’s gotta try. *Shrugs philosophically.*
***** Wow. That sounds kinda saucy, doesn’t it? Lucky garden.