On bank holiday Sunday, the power went out on the main street at 10 pm. God! One of the busiest times of the year. Bottles and spirits only at that point, candles on every surface, and the mother-in-law worrying about insurance claims, real and bogus. Thank goodness the days are long in the summer. Mostly everyone left within the hour, leaving behind neighbors, telling stories and cracking jokes in the candlelit dark.

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The sister-in-law has been sending texts asking whether or not we've booked our holidays. Everyone insists we'll have to go the first week of July, because the sister-in-law will be around to help out the mother-in-law in the bar. But that's when my next period is due. God. I get terrible cramps and I'd be raging if I have to spend a couple of hot days in bed, morose and fuzzy-headed from Nurofen Plus.

Anyways, I don't really want to go on holiday. It feels obligatory at this point: we must go away on holiday because everyone goes on holiday. I don't like the thought of it: planning, booking, trying to make flights and ferries and the like, checking in, checking out, looking for somewhere to eat that the v. picky husband will like, finding out I don't have proper clothes for the weather, blah blah blah. Not to mention that invariably the husband and I will have one huge spat in public: both of us will part ways in anger during some godawful late hour, and I'll wander around trying to locate the hotel with Google Maps, and he'll arrive on the back of someone's motorbike after drinking with the lads in a nearby park. (I know, so many small violins!)

I would rather have a free weekend to do some uninterrupted writing and reading, preferrably away from everyone, including the husband.

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My son. Mom refers to my dog as my son. "Your son, huh. Your son. That's all you have," she said once. Anyways, the other day Des took my son to the beach with his dogs. Sam rolled in a dead seal pup and puked all over Des's car backseat. Oof.

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