Holiday planning

I had a big theory a while ago that we would henceforth plan our holidays around the most suitable destinations for the Boy's age. Hence, by age 5 we would be going to Legoland, 8 we would be, I dunno, going to see Roman stuff in Croatia, and by age 13 we'd see castles and wolves in Romania, the coolness of the location offsetting the general lameness of not being able to stay home with a crate of beer. By 16 we'd be doing cool city breaks to Oslo and having a couple of quiet pints in the bar. By 18 we'd be encouraging the Boy to do a gap year, on the basis that I always wanted to travel properly for 12 months and never did, and cheerfully packing him off to Buenos Aires with a couple of spare pairs of underpants and his best Beano annual.

This has still to come to fruition, obviously. But we have got the Boy a passport and booked a weekend in a big city a short flight away. It feels a bit scary, but it's one of those things you have to do.

Because if we don't take the Boy abroad now, it will turn into a big Thing. We will worry more about going, then will not go. Then we'll spend our holidays going to York and Ballantrae, forever and ever amen. And the Boy will spend his childhood wanting to go to Benidorm because it is easy and hot.

Sometimes, I think easiness may be underrated. I still, occasionally, get crippling social anxiety when I land somewhere and haven't been abroad for a while. We then spend ages walking around outside the bars and cafes, sizing them all up and wondering if they all do food and whether you're about to make a terrible mistake by venturing into an establishment and asking for a salad when the only food they do is paprika crisps, served by Suzi Sexxi Girl from Moldova, in her gravity defying bikini.

I think taking a small child abroad may make me even more irrationally worried about this, even although (or perhaps because) everywhere else in the world is better at accommodating children than here.

So, I think biting the bullet and going abroad is important, and I'm going to try really hard to plan it out and make it achievable. Apart from that I have lost the Boy's passport.
I have only had it a fortnight. But we've been trying to prepare for the Boy getting more mobile by tidying the flat, and I have somehow tidied it away. The general upheaval in the flat combined with lack of sleep mean that I don't have a clue where it is. I vaguely remember tucking it in somewhere, in a place I thought it would turn up in even if I couldn't remember where it was.

Since then, I have had a bit of freelancing working in. I had a couple of good nights' sleep, as well as some bad ones. Outside of my flat, the world has turned. The Olympics have finished. Stuff has gone on. Andy Murray has won a Grand Slam. Scotland remain shit at football, because some things are unchanging. My head has moved on. And I have no idea where I put it.

And I can't find it, because I spent all my time looking after the Boy's immediate needs, cleaning, cooking, trying to fit in freelancing and occasionally communicating with friends or reading.

I really hope it turns up soon. Otherwise, Blackpool beckons.