I am now fully aware of speed, and how it passes at different rates.

Let us take a moment of reflection.  Let us bow our heads and send all of our  thoughts and best wishes to someone who needs all of us to support him at this awful time.

Gordon’s back off holiday!

It will be a familiar feeling to most of you reading this, but nothing can prepare you for the full unadulterated horror of that immediate and jarring return to reality.

Judging by the tweetage live from WDW, the times had by the McBains were tremendous and that of course multiplies the horror once back in the UK.  I think I say this after every trip, but the UK appears to be in black and white when compared to the multi coloured razzle dazzle of the US.  I know of course that spending a holiday in and around WDW, the vacation capital of the word,  is not a fair comparison to flying back into Manchester, which of course isn’t, but still this is real pain.

It is the eternal problem.  You book a holiday, and the days before departure seem endless.  You wish them away, desperate to set off into the magic.  Alas, not only do the actual days of the holiday go at normal speed, they whizz past in record time, seemingly like some end of life experience, and before you know it, you are sat on your couch staring at cases that need unpacking and a fridge that needs filling.

I am therefore trying very hard to relish these last few weeks of our countdown, whilst at the same time, counting every second.

To luxuriate in every element of the planning is the key.  I spend money all the time, certainly at the moment, with us discovering that our new house and its contents has been held together by sellotape and string, the outflowing of cash if like a fiscal diarrhea.  I can tell you that I do not enjoy the spending of one penny.  However, when it comes to holiday related stuff, I can actually take pleasure in laying out cash.

This week’s activity has been the booking of our round of golf.  It took a great deal of research, again, enjoyable, and after some consultation with my golf partners (Dad and Steve), we have a tee time of 9.10am on the 24th of August.  Putting a small dent in a credit card was strangely pleasurable.

That has been it holiday planning wise this week as we are pretty much done.  We are approaching the ticket time, where I have to get those booked, and finally wrestle every last cent out of the dollar purchase.  I shall savour both.

Back in the real world, Rebecca completed her second week of work experience at a local nursery (child, not plant), and promptly caught an awful cold which sees her currently on the couch watching crap telly.  Emily’s provisional driving licence turned up (the paper bit anyway), and more stuff broke in the house.

The weekend has been a little testing to be honest.  Saturday saw me punished for my speeding crimes reported some weeks ago.  I had to drive to Mold.  No, that wasn’t the punishment!!  I attended my speed awareness course.  I promise I shall never speed again if it means sitting through another four hours of that.

Due to the aforementioned breakage of stuff, I had ordered our new fridge yesterday to replace the two integrated ones that were, well pretty much broken.  I checked the website last night, and it said that delivery would occur between……6.29am and 10.29am.  Yep, you read that right.  So I was up at 6am.  To make way for the new fridge, I had to demolish the integrated unit things housing the fridges, and then get them outside ready to be recycled.

With help from my Dad, this next door neighbour thing has its benefits, we eventually wrestled the bloody thing into bits and out of the house.  You will of course have guessed that the new fridge turned up at 10.27am.

It was installed quickly, and that just left me and my Dad to drive around and try to find matching tiles to the ones that should have been underneath the old fridge units but weren’t.  No problem, as they can only have been twenty years old!

Two stops later, and we had a sort of match, or close enough for tiles that will be 90% hidden under the fridge.  We get them on Wednesday.

A big shop later, and I was back home and ready for bed.  It was 3pm.

The loft (almost Emily’s bedroom) is approaching completion, from the builder’s point of view anyway.  It is more or less fully plastered now and we are hoping that a couple of days more work from them next week should see us decorating….for about six weeks.  The one good thing about gutting that room and starting from scratch is that we’ll know that nothing can break in there.  The room will be unique in that respect.

I did a little more writing this week too, with a second article on The WDW Dads site in a matter of days.  I think I’m ill.  Please have a read if you see fit.

Also please, remember to send Gordon and his family all your support at this very difficult time.  I’m sure he will also enjoy you all constantly asking when Day 1 on the trip report will be done.  It won’t be long until that is us, and probably most of the readers of this bloggage.

With that in mind, I will just drop in that we go in 35 days!!  Ave it!!

Till the next time…..