The worst thing about a holiday is the returning to work bit. I coped with the three nights of having unsettling dreams about work (probably the whole anxiety/stress from working to hard thing!) so decided that for the remainder of the week I would be proactive in avoiding anything to do with work. It is in fact impossible for me to avoid EVERYTHING to do with work because it would involve becoming a hermit and not going near my front door for the entire week as I work in an industry that 99.9% of all people come into contact with on a daily basis in at least one way, but possibly a few more. But I managed to avoid thinking about the practicalities of work and only returned to one answerphone message (which wasn’t anything bad) and not too many emails this morning!!! Of course by 5.45am the not nice brown stuff started hitting the fan… nothing like a crisis to get you back in work mode!

In fact I had a wonderful week, after the lovely weekend with my parents I headed to Newcastle where I spent a blissful four days at my sisters. I spent most of the time with my youngest niece (seven months) cuddling and playing and generally trying to make her smile and laugh all the time, which is not hard – the child only cried once during my entire stay (and that was just minutes before I left… what can I say?!). I avoided nappy duty and instead did my bit by feeding her and putting her down for naps… which I didn’t mind one bit. If I was honest I would also say I was verging on broodiness (there’s a first for everything!) – I work out that if I do end up deciding to have kids I’ve got a few years to work out how to have one that like my niece, lots of sleeping and smiling with hardly any tears at all!!! I also spent quite a bit of time with my other niece (5 yrs old) after school – playing boggle, learning Spanish… and even reading her Goldilocks in Welsh (at her request – I don’t speak the language so god knows what I was actually saying!). I also did the putting her to bed bit, not so complicated, just repeat to yourself “Story Teeth Toilet” and it all goes to plan!

After just about resisting the urge to kidnap the baby (my sister would have killed me!) I headed back down to London. One of my best friends, S, was down in London for an interview – and therefore borrowing half my bed for a couple of nights, but instead of being the party animals we usually are we spent Friday night with a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and Comic Relief on TV (which was absolutely fantastic – yes I have donated some money!) and to be honest, although not the most exciting thing to be doing with a Friday night it was absolutely lovely to finish a week of relaxing with yet more relaxing (it is something I need practice at as until recently the notion of relaxing was one I was non to familiar with).

Yet more relaxing followed with a lazy Saturday with S once I had been to Spinning (this time my muscles didn’t kill afterwards, 20 minutes of stretching is the solution!!!) and then a wonderful evening with N (workmate of past and very good friend). And to top it off I continued the theme on Sunday by having a bit of a movie late afternoon/evening (When Harry Met Sally, Moulin Rouge) once T4 had finished…

So all in all I have spent a week being a boring sod, but a very relaxed boring sod who is very pleased with herself for allowing herself to be a boring sod long enough to relax!