What We Did On Our Holidays (Part 2)

I turned 40 on 9th July, and by way of celebration, Doug and I treated ourselves to two days of child-free relaxation in London. We had originally planned for it to be four days of sight-seeing and catching up with old friends, but my mother-in-law didn't feel up to looking after the boys for that length of time; her rheumatoid arthritis is particularly bad at the moment. So we left it at two days of "us" time.

We took afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason (lovely; so elegant - and Chris and Poy from CBeebies were at the next table!) and went to see Spamalot at the theatre (extremely stupid and silly and the funniest thing I've seen for ages).

On my actual birthday, we went to the King Tut exhibition at the O2 (to spend the morning with exhibits even older than me) and to the Globe Theatre in the afternoon. It was also the wettest day I've experienced since the day of the E Yorks floods last June; apparently London got a month's worth of rain in a single day. Needless to say, we got very wet feet and as Doug didn't have a brolly (until much later), he got extremely wet; he finally succumbed and bought a rain cape from the Globe:-


We ended up doing a bit of shopping in Hamleys and in the Haberdashery department of Libertys, which is possibly my favourite bit of shop in London; all that wool, all those different colours and textures, and still the same woman running the shop from when I used to go there over my years in London. There was even a chair for Doug :)

The rain eventually stopped and we managed a couple of cocktails and then dinner at the Boulevard in Covent Garden; we'd originally aimed for dinner at J Sheekey, but its proving impossible to get a table there now. But the Boulevard was where we went on our first date, so it was lovely to go back.

Anyway, a rather wet but very enjoyable break from the kids. Am I bothered about being 40? Actually, not really. I didn't like 30 as I didn't feel I had anything to show for it, but at 40 I'm a wife and mother, and while I might not have anything resembling a career, I feel content. That said, from September Sam will be starting Playgroup with a couple of sessions a week and it won't be long before he'll be there most mornings a week; if life begins at 40, its time to start thinking what to do with the rest of my life....