Martin had been saying for a couple of weeks that he needed a holiday so at the end of November I decided that even though we didn’t have time to have an actual holiday we could manage a night away. We could do the Saturday night, we have no duties at church the next morning, there were no kids activities going on that we need to get people to and from it was just a case of finding someone to have the children and a hotel with a swimming pool that we could actually afford! Luckily we have good friends and after a couple of false starts the children were farmed out to various friends (thank you Elaine and Andrea).
So we had all day Saturday and Sunday morning to ourselves to fully relax in. We had been feeling pretty stressed again, particularly Martin and a grabbed afternoon in the pub the previous Saturday had only highlighted to us that we had moved away from the ideas of including plenty of idleness in our lives and were heading towards manic over business and ineffective activity yet again.
So when we got into the car to head out on Saturday morning and the track playing in the car was Needed A Day Like This by the lovely Paul Bell we really felt we were doing the right thing.
No alarms today
No phones to ring I’m just…
Waking up with the sun and my love
No work today
No bills to pay
It’s just you and me my love.
And today, the world just melts away
I needed a day like this
I needed a day like this
No demands
And no firm plans
We’ve got all the time in the world my love
No plots to hatch
No trains to catch
It’s just you and me my love
And today, the world just melts away
And today, the world just melts away
We had lunch at the always tasty Chale Green Stores and then headed out towards Sandown and our hotel. We were passing the Botanic gardens and decided to stop there for an afternoon walk.
There were brilliant colours and amazing textures and we relaxed, chatted and took photos.
We headed to the hotel (Melville Hall) where there were two unexpected bonuses – a four poster bed in the room and much more impressively an outdoor hot tub. We nipped straight into the hot tub (it was closing shortly) and lay in the hot water watching the stars gradually come out and feeling very very relaxed! We didn’t feel in need of a restaurant meal and it was a nice evening so despite the time of year we headed out to eat fish and chips on the beach. Back to the bar for a drink and a couple of games of crib (only a couple we won one each and weren’t going to risk marital disharmony by playing another).
We were very impressed that the hotel room also had proper wine glasses and more importantly a tea pot!
We headed down to Quarr Abbey for morning tea and cake and after an exceptioanlly long wait got a very attractive set of drinks and a somewhat disappointing slice of shortbread. Nerissa assures me that their cakes are lovely though so we’lll have to go back and try again another day!
So we were happily relaxed when we got back to the kids and determined to make sure we had some time each month when we spent at least an afternoon to ourselves just relaxing with no agenda.