Sussex columnist is back from her summer getaways – and straight into the back-to-school madness

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com 
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Visit Shots! now
​Well, hello! Welcome back to my weekly ramblings. How have you been?!

​It feels like ages since I last wrote a column, but at the same time, the summer holidays (and I use the term ‘summer’ loosely) seemed to fly by.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

So, what have I been doing, you might ask? You might not, but that seemed a natural start to this paragraph so I’m going with it.

When you left me back in the monsoon season that was July, I was packing for our first family beach holiday abroad.

The tour guide on our visit to Mount Teide said Instagrammers love this long, straight, flat road for taking photos and videos on. Well, if it's good enough for them...The tour guide on our visit to Mount Teide said Instagrammers love this long, straight, flat road for taking photos and videos on. Well, if it's good enough for them...
The tour guide on our visit to Mount Teide said Instagrammers love this long, straight, flat road for taking photos and videos on. Well, if it's good enough for them...

You’ll be pleased to know it was an absolute success, and the stress of being an over-packer, an over-thinker and a general worrier was totally worth it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad
Read More
Popular Worthing coffee shop marks one year of trading with event to thank its c...

We went to Tenerife. I’d never been there before and it was absolutely brilliant. It’s beautiful, full of fun things to do and I could fill about three columns on why it’s worth taking your family there. But that’s probably for another day.

What I will say is despite my husband being adamant I was packing too much for our holiday, he would probably now have to concede that having a wife who is firmly in the ‘more is more’ camp is useful at times.

Take the day we took a coach tour to go and see the volcano Mount Teide – the summit of which is the highest point in Spain (just a little bit of extra info for all the fact fans out there).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

As you might imagine, the drive up there is steep and winding.

When we stopped off for a toilet break, my husband said he felt a little queasy because of all the turns on the coach. So, it was with a flourish of great pride that I produced a pair of motion sickness travel bands from my bulging rucksack full of ‘just-in-case’ items.

And when he had a twinge in his back the next day, the ibuprofen I was carrying around was well-received.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

And don’t get me started on the bags of dried fruit and biscuits I bought as snacks for the room – because nobody should want to mess with a child who comes back from a couple of hours in the pool and declares themselves ‘starving’ and incapable of not eating something ‘now, now, now’.

I could go on, but all you really need to take from this is that I am great, and I rule at holiday prep, planning and delivery (insert crazy laughing emoji here).

And aside from the copious amounts of fun we had in the stunning Canaries, I couldn’t be more grateful that we picked this year to go abroad. Because what was that weather here in the UK?! I know Mother Nature is pretending she’s done nothing wrong, by throwing us a bone of some sunshine and high temps the last couple of weeks, but the ‘summer’ was absolutely abysmal. Possibly the worst ever. I probably would have been inconsolable had we not gone away, but for future reference, oh gods of weather, that was not ok!

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

We had two subsequent trips – one in Wales and one to Butlin’s in Bognor Regis – and it’s safe to say I got cold and soggy during both.

Said trips also meant I couldn’t really put the suitcases away for the whole six weeks. So we’ve been living in a ‘half-packed’ world all summer.

While I love being prepared, I didn’t love the constant packing, repacking, loading and unloading of the car, so I was kind of glad when we were back from our third and final trip.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

What I probably wasn’t ready for, however, was the back-to-school madness.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

When it comes to getting back into the school run, six weeks off from it may as well have been a lifetime. Getting up, ready and out the house for just after 8am feels so early.

It seems almost inconceivable that I’ve been doing it for years already.

And while I appreciate that schools need to communicate with parents, the sudden and fairly rampant return of emails and reminders from my children’s educators came as a bit of a rude awakening.

I almost found myself longing for a return to the heady holiday days spent fending off my children as they requested their 15th snack of the day. Almost.