8171/21091
Fucking Hell. I think I like Center Parcs. After feeling like I was in Hell on Monday, I actually got to a state of being quite blissed out today. I was having fun.
If I am honest, usually when I am on holiday there's a pretty annoying part of me counting down the nights and wanting to get back home to work. I hate that part of myself. He's the reason I can afford to go to Center Parcs, but he's also the reason that I find it hard to let my hair down, relax and have fun. I've missed out on so many experiences because he's told me to go home to bed on a night out or that I should be trying to write rather than skiving off and doing something fun or just doing nothing. He's an absolute prick who is shifty and uneasy when sitting on beaches in paradise and resistant to taking part in drug fuelled orgies (would have been if ever been offered) because he has to be clear-headed to write a sketch for Radio 4 the next morning.
Who would have thought that Center Parcs would be the place where he finally shut up and gave in and let me enjoy the moment? Perhaps he has realised that my work-based ambitions were never going to be worth the effort, just as my body was unable to enjoy many of the benefits of not giving a fuck.
I played soft tennis with Phoebe first thing and had a slight Center Parcs win as we turned up 15 minutes early and there was no one on court so we got an hour for the price of 45 minutes (you've got to take your wins where you can here). That's my CP hack - book for early sessions and turn up early. Also always carry table tennis bats and ping pong balls with you, so you can play for free (there's always empty tables and no one is checking - and you don't even have to buy the equipment, just pay for one session and don't give the stuff back until the end).
In the afternoon I got my first couple of hours off from looking after one or both kids and got to sit on a picnic table and read
"I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning" which I am very much enjoying. After about five days of being with the family all the time, two hours on my own felt like paradise. And then Catie went for a massage and the kids and me went for our last pool session, with more plummeting out of a pipe like an even chubbier Mario or a slippery turd and I even persuaded Ernie to have another go on the Rapid River, which he suddenly LOVED, so we had to do it three times. The pool is less busy in the evening which definitely made this ride less irksome- also it felt like the water flowed faster too.
I suppose part of the reason that his holiday is such fun is that the kids are now old enough to properly take part in stuff and to be approaching self-sufficiency. At dinner tonight Ernie went off for 25 minutes and played on the soft play without our supervision. Even a year ago I couldn't imagine a time when I'd be happy to have either one of the kids out of sight - how do you even get to the point where you're not fretting if you lose track of them for three seconds? It's not like that's totally gone away, but again, I can relax a little bit and let them do their own thing. Even Ernie, who has an 80% chance of getting into some kind of trouble when left to his own devices.
Anyway, it was a good day. Can't believe that it's over tomorrow. But really can't believe that I wish it wasn't over yet.
