Staycation

It takes blackout blinds to keep my mind asleep in summer. The two hour power nap I took first in Ava’s, then Jonah’s single beds probably didn’t help, but I was full of barbecue, and the clean up, from Grandma Kat’s garden to her first floor kitchen looked immense. Besides, we had been drinking wine on the beach with my sister Katie, partner John and baby Sam and I needed to catch up on the whirlwind of the past week.

It’s the perfect time to take stock. The house, the one with the postage stamp backyard, increasingly looks like a goer again. Sellers have found something in vacant possession, so it looks as though it will all go through again, and perhaps even quickly. It will be a pleasant upheaval, but upheaval nonetheless, with practicalities, the school run and such, intertwining with frivolities, wall colour and such like, that in a house full of rigidity and neurosis, can cause more upset than many.

But for now, it’s pleasant just to be, with family I spend too little time with, a piece of the country I barely know to explore, and the promise of a few sunny days whose highlights can be recorded on Facebook in all their technicolour perfection, marred only by the presence of my finger over the smartphone lens.

It’s 4.45am. The birds are tweeting, which is how it should be, and in the morning I am taking the kids, with Tom, to the Isle of Wight.

One of the first dreams I remember from my childhood is Blackgang Chine, and I’m curious to see how it differs from my warped memories now part of it has fallen into the sea. But I should try and sleep, rather than reading Beckett’s First Love in bed and disturbing Tom, who has probably been disturbed enough this week.