I am feeling restless, in want of a change, but to where? And to do what?
By feeling like this does it mean that I am unhappy with my life? Because that’s just not so. I can’t even say I’m bored, or that I have nothing to do in fact just the reverse.
If I am honest, I really should be used to this happening, because it occurs to me every spring.
I feel that I want a new challenge, a new adventure. When the kids were little I used to take a trip to Blackpool and after a day or two there with three children, with all of them wanting this and wanting that, I was glad, relieved to get back to my mundane everyday life. But Blackpool! It was the Mecca of my childhood.
It started with the packing – should we pack a mac in case the weather was a bit iffy? And as we were ‘boarding’ what food should we take?
Because we were boarding, Mum provided the main ingredients for our meals and the ‘house’ would cook them.
If you wanted, and our mum was feeling flush, there were extras you could buy, like rice pudding at so much a plate.
Going to Blackpool meant the excitement of a train ride, leaning out of the carriage window to be the first to catch a glimpse of the Tower, my father lording it by paying a man sixpence to carry the big case from the station to the digs, buying a comic at the station to read in bed, washing with a tablet of Lux soap. Oh the joys!
The treats seemed endless, and I recall feeling ever so posh, as the lady of the house brought up to us cocoa and biscuits to eat in bed. I later found out that we got this special treatment because my father had been billeted with them during the First World War.
I regret that I didn’t talk enough to him or my mum about their First World War experiences.
Just to think he was wounded four times before he was 19, incredible.
And that was the war to end all wars, ironic isn’t it?
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