Holiday luck 

I’m not exactly known for my straight forward, everything according-to-plan holidays. I’ve had a few disasters actually. Some right hum dingers in fact. Missed flights, lost passports, crap weather, and now I can add lost luggage to the checklist.

I had a number of years where I was cursed with bad weather. A holiday in Portugal where we hired a convertible car but it didn’t stop raining for long enough to put the top down. Eventually I determinedly wrapped the kids in towels and drove for ten minutes with the roof open, just so they could experience the wind (and rain) in their hair. It was so cold, I wore the kids’ socks in bed. The holiday to the Canaries with Yvonne and our four year old kids, it rained so hard one night, the water came through to the living room, from under the door. We stood in puddles of water, eating pizza out of boxes because it was too wet to go out for dinner and we were so pissed off we couldn’t be bothered with plates. We wore rain jackets every day and came back whiter than when we left. In Majorca with the kids and Siobhan the following year, mre rain. More ‘unexpected’ cold winds and storms. Christ! It got to the point where friends used to check when I was taking my summer holidays, just to be sure they weren’t travelling when I was!

The kids were young for all those holidays – three, four, five years old. I was working hard, full time and then some. Getting a break was crucial for my sanity. It was bad enough with a pal on board – disappointing, frustrating, hard work, but at least there was someone there to laugh about it with. But on my own, that was tough. I spent many nights, having put my gorgeous babies to bed, crying, wondering when I would ever get a rest; when things would go right for me.