Like everyone else this Summer I was blinded by our heatwave in June and booked the Devon holiday park summer break. Not realising August would turn into typhoon season, we packed our raincoats and suncream, wellies and swimming costumes and set off for our week away.

Leaving the Old man at home who had work commitments, meant that the 3 hour drive was solely mine. Due to the torrential rain the 3 hour drive turned into a 6 hour journey, with us veering off the motorway to find ‘ an idyllic lunch spot’. A deserted pub on a deserted seafront, serving up rough looking chicken goujons wasn’t what I had in mind!!

On arrival at the holiday park we managed to get all our luggage into the chalet before the thunder and lightening struck. So worn out from the drive, we spent the first night in the entertainment bar with Loopy and his disco. The 7yr old loved it- up on the dance floor, doing the Macarena like an old pro! The 12 yr old spent the majority of his holiday money in the arcade in the first 10 minutes. This left me to sit in the bar and sing along with hits from the last 3 decades- whether I knew them or not. Safe to say I had a headache in the morning.

The following days were spent on the beach, where the kids spent 3 hours digging a hole, cycling for 11 miles round fantastic scenery- won’t tell you what ached after that- and a rainy day in Torquay shopping centre finding things to buy in the pound shop.

So although it wasn’t quite the sunshine holiday I’d envisaged- the kids got on great, we had lots of great meals together, lots of great family chats and now I know all the words to Ketchup Song.

Highlight of the trip- bingo in the arcade and the 12 yr old sweating over one number- you wouldn’t get that in the Maldives!!

Led into a calm soothing room filled with aromatic candles and soothing music my defences were down. The herbalist proceeded to wedge her knuckkles into various sensitive parts of my body- whilst asking “does it hurt”?. Able to understand my grunts and groans she told me my body organs were poorly functioning and my circulation was quite frankly rubbish. So distraught am I that I don’t utter a word when she slaps on a sticky pad to each sole and tells me the toxins will be out by morning. As I managed to move my illfunctioning body from the room I was greeted with a conveyor belt of pills, potions and powders. Asking to see my tongue she humphed, and replaced two bottles with two others ( I can only assume she’d discovered more bad news). her hands moved like lightening back and fore to the bottles and the caluclator. The words ” that will be £198″, didn’t sink in the first time, good job there’s stuff there for my failing brain function too then !!
As I looked at her I uttered the desperate words- “after all of this will I feel better”. Well what do you think she said??

So now I have around 85 pills a day along with powders and drinks. So if in 20 days I feel refreshed, and revitalised and my ying is inline with my yan- it’ll all be worth it- Just have to muster up the strength now to open all the bottles of pills-and hope that my brain is functioning well enough to remember which ones I take and when.

How wrong can an unfit 40 something be??

I’m met at the door by a cheery, cherpy slip of a girl with bundles of energy and a waist the size of my bangle. As she looks me up and down she asks me what my objectives are. “Get fit, tone up” says I feeling confident. Okay then let’s start with some cardiovascular to burn off some of that fat says the stick insect grabbing my love handles, that I thought I’d expertly hidden under my Lycra workout top.

We moved over to the cross trainer machine. “My God it’s weird”, laughed I as my legs went one way and my arms went the other. Realising I wasn’t doing it properly, in fact I was going backwards- I was shown how to do it correctly. As the instructor stopped to have a chat with her mate- another stick insect- I hiked up the speed and went full pelt into my cross trainer action. 1.30mins showed on the timer and I was sweating like a navvy and dangerously out of breath. At this point the two instructors looked over and said “mmm,”.

I decided to defer the attention and get off the machine by asking what the others did. Had a go at the exercise bikes not showing myself up too much on them, the rowing machine- showed myself up highly on that, and then we moved to the weights machines.
Sides of arms, back of arms, middle of arms and shoulders. Front of legs, back of legs, sides of legs, all over legs. Backs, boobs and buttocks- you name it we did it. I ended up flat on a mat doing three different types of ab crunches.

45 mins after I’d walked in I barely managed to hobble my way out. With my programme charted in my folder, waiting for me to start I waved to the stick insects who were chatting to a 70yr old guy on the running machine coming up to his 30th minute at top speed.

To top it all when I got home my eldest son lovingly announced, “Mum, you think you’re aching now, wait till tomorrow”. The folder’s still there in the gym waiting 5 days later. One day, one day!!!!!

As I began my usual oration about “when I was young we used to play out”, I realised that maybe it wasn’t such a good thing to tell them that- we used to play out in the streets till it was dark- only going inside for food and water, on most days we would play in the woods behind our house, roaming miles away from our street and finding all sorts of weird and wonderful things- and sometimes people!! Only coming back to inhabited land when we heard the call from one of our Mums, or the batteries in our torches were dead and our night eyes weren’t working properly.

Kids these days aren’t allowed more than two feet away from the parents, and the thought of them being in an isolated area with no supervision is enough to bring on a seizure in most parents. Certainly not able to tell them that we used to play ‘knock-a-door run’ on our long suffering neighbours doors. Kids do that nowadays and they’re most likely to be greeted with a three headed Rottweiler and then a court summons to the parents from the noise abatement society.

We would spend the whole summer holidays being taken to the river by our highly irresponsible older cousins, and return to our homes covered in doc leaves from all the nettle stings, dripping from head to toe and in the first flushes of hypothermia from the freezing river water. We would build impossibly dangerous go-karts out of old boxes and wonky wheels, set up tightrope wires from the garden trees-not a safety net in sight and best of all, get a gang together and build HQ in the garden shed- amongst the lethal array of Dads power tools.

So when my kids go on and on- and on- about how boring my childhood must have been I nod and agree and smile to myself with the memories of all the things we were allowed to get up to- and safe in the knowledge that they’ll never know.

Kids these days- don’t know they’re born!!!