Ah. Once you've established that your fears that your house will be a smouldering shell are unfounded and you've found the key, there's nothing like opening your own front door after a week or two away. Or in our case, stepping over the solidified milk - dairy delivery people, prepare yourselves, we'll be having words soon - and shoving past the mini mountain of mail.... Still, nothing in the house smelled too horrible and what passes for a lawn is so mossy it hadn't reverted to rain forest quite yet. And things weren't as untidy as I'd feared. No, the stinky stuff was in the car. Two weeks worth of stuff for five people stuffed into one medium sized car and driven up the country on two scorching hot day to be stuck in two separate hand-brake on, engine off traffic jams. Ripe might be the word. It's never possible to separate the clean stuff and hang it back up again. Maybe other people, better packers, can, but not me. So the faithful machine has been working flat out since we got home and the mountain is only slightly diminished. Though things smell a little better. It turns out the real niffiness culprits were those neoprene shoe things you're supposed to wear with your wetsuit. They smell even worse than they look so have found their way to the bin now with the scarily solid milk. Every holiday I come back grappling with a paradox. Grappling might be overstating the case somewhat, maybe "gently prodding". Anyhow the post hols dichotomy is this: I return home and greet the clutter as if it is something new, it clearly having fallen from my consciousness and, therefore, being unnecessary to my future happiness. So I am aware I don't need all this stuff and must get rid of it to lighten the load. However, I am so chilled out I simply can't be bothered to do anything about it. What's the answer? I've no idea and, what's more, I've no intention of thinking about it. Instead, I'm going to bed early to see what's in store for Mr and Mrs de Winter at Manderley as I didn't get my holiday book finished.
