Chalk and Cheese

Having arrived and installed ourselves in our hotel in Lyme Regis, all seemed to be going well.

But then... not everything went quite perfectly... except when it did. Our days were a peculiar mixture of ups and downs, highs and lows, chalk and cheese.

Chalk

Initially, we were more than happy with our hotel room, with its proximity to the "games room" that allowed us to sit in peace while LittleBear fell asleep, its distance from the bar and restaurant meaning we were spared the comings and goings of late night revellers, its view of the sea via a quiet courtyard. And then The Other Family arrived. They occupied the two rooms beside ours. They had large dogs who appeared to need to go outside every hour or so. They had a deaf grandfather with whom they attempted to play Who Wants to be a Millionaire? late into the night. They had children who were prone to slamming doors and running up and down corridors. They had a mother who stumbled down the corridor, glass of wine in hand, telling her 7 year-old child that he couldn't go to bed yet, despite it being 10pm. By Saturday morning, BigBear was muttering that he wanted to drive home that day. We spent a particularly grim breakfast, staring at the tablecloth and not speaking.

Cheese

I gently approached the nice people at reception and explained that we were not having the most restful time, what with the noise from The Other Family, and the dogs, and so on. This is not my usual style, since it involved both speaking to another human being and complaining out loud*, but the Bad-tempered Breakfast required desperate measures. And thus we ended up being moved to a different room. A room beside the King Edward Lounge, a residents' lounge that nobody else appeared to want to use. So essentially a private sitting room. We were, alarmingly, above the bar. And yet, after about 9:30 there was merely a murmur from below. More enjoyably, the bar was within baby-monitor range of our new room, and we were able to sit and have a pint of beer together while LittleBear went to sleep. If we hadn't been so utterly shattered after being kept awake by The Other Family, we might have (a) managed to find something to talk to each other about and (b) not given up and gone to bed ourselves at about 9 o'clock.

Our own private sitting room

Chalk

The hotel's "games room", as well as being equipped with full-sized snooker table, table-tennis table, and bar billiards table had an ottoman full of board games. LittleBear was wildly excited to find that there was a Scrabble set, and spent a large portion of time when we were trying to get him to do something else, agitating to know when we could play. And when we came to play... there was no board in the box. And his world began to crumble. Feeling that I needed to spare others from such levels of distress, I took the box to reception to hand it in and let them know it was perhaps less playable than imagined.

Cheese

When confronted with the Disappointing Scrabble Set, the young man at reception said, "Oh, I didn't know the board was missing, but I've got a new one here we hadn't got round to putting in the games room yet. You could take this one." So we christened the new board, and I was trounced at Scrabble by a six-year old again**. 

Chalk

Our first fossil-hunting day dawned bright, clear and sunny, which was a lovely day to be out in. Unfortunately, it was also a continuation in the delightfully mild winter that has resulted in very little in the way of fresh erosion and fossil exposure.

We re-introduced ourselves to the Lovely Fossil Men, C and P, who are friends of a friend, and joined the fossil hunt again. And LittleBear bounced up and down on his toes, arm stretched high, desperate to answer every question. The poor gents had to resort to saying, "Yes, we know you know, but how about some of the other boys and girls? Or grown-ups? Or anyone?" And when it came time to hand out some pre-found ammonites, LittleBear found himself at the back of the queue, as C pointed out, "you have been before, and you do have lots of fossils, so we'd better let the others have some first." My little moppet's bewildered face clearly didn't understand what was going on.

However, LittleBear had obviously touched a soft spot in P's heart, because he lurked behind C, tapped him on the shoulder and muttered to him that he had a special fossil for LittleBear. Which is how my spoilt small boy received a beautiful little pyritized ammonite with a fossilized parasitic worm on its back, and not just a boring old ammonite on its own.

And down the beach we stomped, hunting for fossils, and finding a quite considerable quantity of ammonites, belemnites and crinoid stems. But then... woe and calamity... I found an ichthyosaur vertebra. Surely this is a good thing? You'd think so. But no. The problem was that I found it, thus shattering the internal narrative LittleBear had constructed of his triumphant discovery of a vertebra. And thus we found ourselves, miles along a cold and windswept beach, with a rather poorly, over-tired, small boy, sobbing his heart out at how wrong everything was. P and C were rather concerned, and I had to do my best to assure them that it was nothing to do with their fossil trip. We managed to insert some chocolate-chip cookies into LittleBear, and drag him back to the town to find some lunch before hypothermia and starvation caused any further damage.

Cheese

Our second day of fossil hunting followed hot on the heels of the Bad-tempered Breakfast, and was an expedition undertaken only by LittleBear and me, while BigBear went to explore the cliff path. And LittleBear, his expectations suitably adjusted downwards, had a lovely non-tearful time, finding all the normal fossils. He bounced up to both P and C when we encountered them on the beach to tell them what he'd found. He was utterly untroubled by the absence of complete plesiosaurs, and quite delighted with everything he found. He did demand that I stop looking for belemnites as it was "not fair" that I'd found more than him. In fact, at one point he removed one from my hand and threw it back into the shingle, to even things up, but I allowed that to glide past, for the sake of an enjoyable few hours with my moppet.

We raced back along the damp sand, leaping over little streams and giggling together, to reconvene with BigBear at the sea wall. And then we all had a little pause while LittleBear "dammed" a rock pool and declared proudly that he'd completely stopped the flow of water from one side to the other.

Our collection of easily-portable fossils

Chalk

LittleBear, being (I hope) a rather typical small boy, has a distinct reluctance to do what we want to do on rather too many occasions. Often, to my frustration, the thing that we're suggesting is something I know he'll enjoy. Which is how I ended up having to cajole and drag my small boy a matter of a few hundred metres ("but it's miles Mummy") to a museum full of awesome fossils. Because what LittleBear really wanted to do was play Top Trumps in our hotel room, and not have to any of those terrible holiday activities his parents were suggesting.

Cheese

As well as finding, as predicted, all the awesome fossils, we also discovered that there was a cool craft activity going on in the museum. Because Dippy is on tour from the Natural History Museum, they had a 3D-printed copy of his skull, and a artist/educator who was getting children to join in making a model of Dippy's skeleton with glue, and black tissue paper, and toilet rolls and straws, and all the other good Blue Peter-style stuff. And the three of us settled in with the friendly artist man and had a lovely half hour of gluing and sticking and generally having a nice time.

Making a miniature Dippy

Extra Cheese 

As I believe I alluded to when describing the songs LittleBear was making up, Squidy came on holiday with us. Some of you may not remember quite how big Squidy is. He needed to wear a seatbelt to be safe while travelling...

Squidy's coming on holiday.

 But he did like being tucked up in bed

And yes, LittleBear did manage to fit into that bed with his squid. And a penguin. And a stingray. And a hammerhead shark.

But most of all, Squidy enjoyed pretending to be Meryl Streep, sitting at a table used in the filming of The French Lieutenant's Woman, where Meryl sat.

The French Lieutenant's Squid

* As some of you may have noticed, I am awesome at complaining in private, or in writing, but doing so in person is not my thing at all.

** The six-year old in question does receive a certain amount of help from his doting mother, but is developing into a keen Scrabble-player.

Road Trip to Lyme Regis (redux)

Last summer, LittleBear and I set out on a road trip to the Jurassic Coast. We went without BigBear, and (mostly) had a marvelous time. There were less than marvelous points, such as car-sickness, and attempting to share a bed with my son, but it was largely splendid. And while staying in Lyme Regis, we went on a guided fossil-hunting walk, which was an excellent way of taking the pressure off me to be good at finding fossils. However... the two delightful men running the fossil-hunt cheerfully told my son that the best time to find fossils is actually in winter, when the rougher seas, and worse weather, cause more erosion and more mudslides, revealing more fossils. Not to mention that there are fewer people visiting, so fewer people finding all the lovely fossils.

Which is why we're now in Lyme Regis in February.

I had intended to repeat last year's efforts and write a daily blog of the trip, but we're already on day three of the road trip, and I've only just found the energy to do so. The last two days we were staying with GrannyBear, which was a great relief. As I have recently mentioned, I've been a bit under the weather, and LittleBear has had The Eternal Cough. My patience has been wearing more than a trifle thin, such that I reached a new nadir of parenting shortly after midnight on Tuesday....

BigBear was still at home, and not due to join us for another day. LittleBear had gone to bed coughing. I had gone to bed at 10:15 and fallen asleep in around 17 seconds. An hour later, LittleBear's coughing started. So I trotted over to his room and rubbed his back and soothed him. Then at midnight a small figure appeared beside my bed to inform me that it was midnight and that he couldn't sleep because of his cough. So I invited him to join me, as it seemed the simplest solution. Then I remembered how much I hate sharing a bed with LittleBear. And then he needed his bedside light. Then his GroClock. Then his cuddlies. After I'd been back and forth several times, and found the cough medicine, I was even shorter on patience than I usually am in the wee small hours. Which is how I came to say, "If I'm horrible to you all day tomorrow, it will be your own fault for keeping me awake!"

Like I said - a parenting nadir.

I more or less redeemed myself by cuddling my moppet, and stroking his hair and soothing his worries about not sleeping, and about coughing, and soon we both drifted off to sleep. To my surprise, neither of us woke up again until shortly after 7 o'clock. Then my LittleBear read his book beside me in bed before trotting round to GrannyBear's room to check if she was awake and climbing into bed with her for a cuddle and a chat. The next thing I knew it was 9:30 and I stumbled, bleary-eyed, downstairs to find LittleBear and GrannyBear playing Scrabble together. I cannot begin to put into words how grateful, relieved and lucky I felt in having such an understanding mother, and such a biddable small boy, that they allowed me the extra sleep that I needed and happily got on with their day together.

Valentine's Day thus passed in a medley of games and food, with me in a considerably better mood than I'd managed for some time (and I apologised to my LittleBear for my poor behaviour in the night...) And finally, after many train-based-delays, BigBear arrived and we were ready to start the major part of our road trip the next morning.

This time, we were not travelling on a Bank Holiday, and I had not allowed LittleBear to over-fill himself with soft fruit, so we managed to arrive without a hint of vomit. LittleBear was (again) underwhelmed by Stonehenge, and (again) delighted with the place names. We were thrilled to rediscover West Camel, and to find its compatriot Queen Camel. In fact, we then spent several miles being regaled with a long list of potential camel-based place names. And then an even longer list of random-words-with-camel-appended, before parental patience wore thin and we called a halt to the recitation. LittleBear then returned to another current favourite - making up his own songs. Songs with catchy lyrics such as:

There's a mince pie in the sky

or

Blu-tack is small and round and furry like bolognese

or

Squidy's going on holiday
Squidy's going on holiday
Squidy's going on holiday
Oo! Sign to Lyme Regis!

Because, yes, we have brought a cuddly giant squid on holiday with us. I am more than a little bit relieved that our room is near the back of the hotel, and accessible via a door from the carpark and I was not forced to march down Broad Street and through the hotel carrying a giant, scarlet, cuddly squid.

So far, LittleBear has declared this to be the best hotel he's ever stayed in. Which he says about every hotel we ever stay in, but let's not quibble. It has a swimming pool and jacuzzi that LittleBear and I have made use of already, despite my having left my swimming costume at home. Because it's the kind of hotel where they expect you to be gormless and therefore have a stash of swimming costumes of various sizes to buy at reception.

So far, it's shaping up to be the best place I've stayed with LittleBear, if for no other reason than I am currently writing this while sat on a sofa, with a large glass of wine in front of me, in a properly lit room, safe in the knowledge that LittleBear is tucked up in bed about 6 metres away from me, and I have a baby monitor by my side so I know he's OK. This is a significant improvement on sitting hunched in a corner of a pitch black room, trying to type quietly.

And tomorrow we start hunting for fossils again.

Road Trip: end of the road

And finally, we're home.

Actually we got home last night, but I was (for a change) too exhausted to contemplate writing anything. Besides, it was quite nice to sit with BigBear and catch up on life and the Vuelta a España.

Between Lyme Regis and home we stopped for two nights at GrannyBear's house, which I think GrannyBear more or less survived, and more or less enjoyed. I think two days with LittleBear brought her almost to the same level of exhaustion as me though, so it's probably a good thing it wasn't any longer than that.

One of my favourite parts of staying with GrannyBear, aside from having a bed to myself, and aside from two nights of gloriously uninterrupted sleep, and aside from having a chance to do the crossword with GrannyBear*, was the fact that LittleBear, upon seeing us doing a crossword, wanted to set one for GrannyBear. So, LittleBear choose some words, and I made a grid for them, and then LittleBear invented some clues...

First among his requirements was that the clues shouldn't be too easy for GrannyBear. Unfortunately, LittleBear has a rather over-inflated idea of GrannyBear's knowledge of dinosaurs, or of the inner workings of LittleBear's mind. Let me give you some examples:

Sometimes it's wobbly (5 letters)
Go on, admit it, you think it's jelly don't you? GrannyBear did too, but it's not. It's tooth. It's true that a major feature of the road trip has been a wobbly tooth, but it wasn't perhaps at the forefront of GrannyBear's mind to quite the same extent as LittleBear's mind.

Something which tries to creep up on people
Naturally enough, GrannyBear tried to think of as many sneaky predators as possible, knowing LittleBear's preferences. She did not, perhaps unsurprisingly, think of LittleBear himself, as he has rather more of a tendency to bounce up to people rather than creep as such. He lays claim to "sometimes" creeping up on people, so the solution to this particular clue was his own name.

Something with long claws (10 letters)
I particularly enjoyed this clue, mostly because of LittleBear's utter glee as he thought of it. I shall put you out of your misery and let you know that it's Suchomimus, a spinosaurid whose name means "crocodile mimic", due to its very crocodile-like skull. I suggested that we should perhaps mention its crocodilian features, to give GrannyBear a chance, but Littlebear demurred, "No Mummy, that would be too easy. This will be funny because Granny will think it's Baryonyx, and it's not!" In vain did I attempt to convince him that GrannyBear would most certainly not think of Baryonyx straight away, if at all, so poor GrannyBear was confronted with an almost insoluble clue.

I think GrannyBear can feel justifiably proud of herself for getting 7 out of the 10 clues (with a few extra hints) given the level of challenge she was set.

And then... we were back on the road again. And as we set off for the Motorway From Hell, the satnav reported even more foul traffic than usual, and suggested we go the other way. Let me show you...

The Motorway From Hell

We wanted to get from A to B. Generally, clockwise is shorter and quicker. We went anticlockwise. This was a decision of dubious worth, as it took us 3 hours and 118 miles to undertake what is normally a 2 hour and 90 mile journey. I'm clinging to the view that I don't know how bad clockwise was, and it might actually have been worse than our actual journey. Please don't tell me otherwise.

But, finally we're home, after 491 miles on the road.

It's been fun, but exhausting. Being a solo-parent for a week away from home was both rewarding in being utterly all-encompassing, and allowing me to be completely absorbed into my LittleBear's world, and also exhausting in being relentless in responsibility and concentration. So tomorrow I go back to work for a couple of days and let BigBear and LittleBear bond. And I am looking forward to it, just a teensy bit.


* Which I still haven't finished yet, dammit.

Road Trip: Day Something Or Other

Those of you who have been eagerly following my day-by-day account of my adventure to the Jurassic Coast with LittleBear will have been devastated to notice that I didn't write anything yesterday. This was for two reasons.

Firstly, I was absolutely exhausted. Properly, properly exhausted. I had thought that LittleBear's night-time rotations had run through all possible permutations, but I had not fully appreciated that there are times that, labrador-like, he seems to chase rabbits in his sleep. His little legs flail up and down as he runs wildly after little bunnies (or perhaps Lambeosaurs) and he grunts and wurtles to himself. This would be mildly distracting if he were simply lying beside me. And it was. It was more than mildly distracting when he was lying with his feet on my stomach.

Secondly, I was relishing the opportunity to put LittleBear to bed and then retreat to a different room, sit on an actual piece of furniture and speak to another human being. GrannyBear and I sat on a sofa and did a crossword together*.  This was a distinct improvement on the previous three evenings, where I had tucked LittleBear up, switched the light off and then sat on the floor in a dark corner, lit only by the ethereal glow of my laptop screen. Blogging in the dark is challenging. I can generally find all the letters by touch alone, and can stare at the screen as I type. If I want to do anything radical, like use punctuation, then I need to angle the screen downwards so it lights up the keys, at which point I can no longer see the screen. You can imagine it was a somewhat laborious process, because I'm quite fond of punctuation. And I was sat on the floor. Normally I don't mind sitting on the floor. I do it quite a lot. But after spending rather more time than I'd like, carrying rather more rocks in my back-pack than I'd like, up rather more hills than I'd like, my back was rather more painful than I'd like. Sitting on the floor was like twisting the knife in the red-hot agony of backache.

So, I didn't feel like writing last night.

But now LittleBear is happily watching a recording of Match of the Day**, and I can sit on Actual Furniture and type where I can see and all sorts of other luxuries.

Yesterday was a long, but enjoyable, stage in our road trip, back on the road again.

To avoid Further Incidents, I moved LittleBear's car seat into the front of the car, and I forbade the consumption of soft fruit at breakfast. The two-pronged attack was entirely successful, and we managed 95 miles, mostly on small, windy roads, without any complaints. Once again, I have no idea where we went, simply putting myself in the hands of the satnav. I can tell you we went past a village called West Camel, which was definitely our favourite for the day. Better even than Middle Wallop. And we also passed Stonehenge, which I attempted to explain to LittleBear. I'm not sure I managed to convey the full historical and cultural importance of Stonehenge... "but why would you travel thousands of miles just to come and see that Mummy?"

Nonetheless, we made good time, and before we knew it we'd arrived with the Bear cousins Somewhere In Hampshire. And I was able to relax into the warm embrace of family, enhanced enormously by the presence of BoyCousin, to whom LittleBear attaches himself whenever he sees him. I barely saw him for several hours as his (very tolerant) older cousin played lego with him, and played football with him and smiled and nodded as LittleBear became tired and deranged and talked nonsense. BoyCousin is nearly ten years older than LittleBear and yet is infinitely patient and kind with him. One day, I hope, he will realise just how huge a difference it makes to me to be able to talk to my aunt and (grown-up) cousins without constantly supervising LittleBear. It's almost like being a normal human being again. If I'm lucky, LittleBear will grow up to be as delightful a boy as BoyCousin.

And then, finally, the last leg of the day, a mere 45 miles back to GrannyBear's house. A bed to myself. Bliss...


* Actually, we attempted a crossword, and became slightly vexed when we discovered that the Grauniad had managed to publish a mis-print in their prize crossword. I suppose we should be proud of ourselves for being good enough to have solved enough to identify a mistake, but still...

** A 1-1 draw for Burnley against Spurs at Wembley, which, in the words of BigBear, "feels like a win to me".

Road Trip: Day 4

This is one for those of you who like the "spot the next shape in the sequence" puzzles. Here you go:

What is it?

I lied. It's not a puzzle at all, it's a depiction of the various positions LittleBear is able to occupy in a double bed in one night. I shall make it easier for you by depicting my approximate location throughout these manoeuvres.

Some are less fun than others

I have also discovered how LittleBear shifts position in his bed at home. He braces his feet against the wall and pushes off to lever his body round. There is no wall beside this bed. There is, however, my stomach.

We were both, once again, a trifle weary come morning. But we still managed to have a Splendid Time. We visited two museums, bought some presents, did a spot more fossil-hunting, and made a new friend on the beach, with whom major excavations were undertaken, I say "made a new friend", making it sound like LittleBear is the kind to spontaneously make friends with new people. In fact, LittleBear and Charlie were digging neighbouring holes in the sand, when Charlie announced that they would be able to dig a much bigger and better hole if they worked as a team. Then he informed LittleBear that they should be friends, as friends worked as teams. LittleBear acquiesced to both these suggestions and calmly continued to dig a hole, now in the company of Charlie. They seemed quite content and it absolved me of having to join the digging party. At least until Charlie had to go home for lunch.

But the thing I am most proud of my LittleBear for has been his restraint and self-control in choosing a present for himself. At the start of this trip, I told him I would buy him ONE treat. In the first shop he saw, he fell with glee upon the first piece of plastic tat he saw. I suggested a strategy - I suggested that over the course of this stay, he remember all the things he saw that he liked and only choose between them on the last day, and then he would be sure that he got the thing he most wanted. And he agreed. Not only that, but he accepted my stricture that  £35 was too much for a plastic dinosaur. (Seriously -  thirty-five pounds. There were awesome, real fossils that cost less than that). So, today, after three fossil shops, two museum shops, a bookshop and a toyshop, LittleBear chose a rather adorable cuddly pterosaur. And he shows no signs of regretting any of the things he didn't get. And I am just immensely proud and pleased to have such a lovely little boy, who is not throwing tantrums about wanting more and more and more stuff, and who is so endearingly delighted with a new cuddly toy. And it wasn't £35.

LittleBear enjoying lunch with his pterosaur

Road Trip: Day 3

I was slightly tempted to describe this as "Night 2" as the night-time events assumed a disproportionate significance in my mind, not to mention contributing significantly to the fatigue levels experienced during the day. Let me introduce you to the bed I was confronted with when I decided to attempt to achieve blissful somnolence:

Where do I go?

I did, mostly, manage to wrangle LittleBear's legs back into roughly his half of the bed, but they showed a marked reluctance to stay there, introducing themselves to my stomach, back and legs for much of the night, and to my face at least twice. There was also a notable occasion  on which I heard LittleBear reach over for his water bottle and take a drink. When I didn't hear him put it back, I rolled over to tell him to do so, only to find him fast asleep, snoring and cuddling his water bottle. It appears he was able to undertake the whole process without waking up. Which I wish I could say for me.

But it's OK, I didn't have to withstand this for long. We woke up at 6 as the light streamed through the very pretty, but wholly inadequate, blinds.

Fortified by significant quantities of coffee, plus scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast, I felt better equipped to cope with a non-travelling day on our road trip. Well, not car-based travelling. We did spend 7 hours out and about around Lyme Regis, the bulk of it fossil-hunting, and covered 3.5 miles on foot when measured in a straight line (i.e. not including the dashing back and forth, clambering up and down and darting hither and yon that all outings with LittleBear involve).

It was a beautiful day, which was a pity...

A beautiful day

... because beautiful days mean quiet seas and no rain, which consequently means no fresh mudslides, no dramatic erosion, no turned over boulders, and little chance of interesting finds. We came perilously close to deep distress as the second hour of hunting ticked past with no new finds by LittleBear, and even chocolate and Haribo failed to completely raise morale. But all was not lost, as LittleBear adjusted to the idea that it was OK to find things that we couldn't take home with us, and then all was well again, because he was really good at spotting those.

Too big for Mummy to carry

(For my non-geologist friends, and I do have some, the hammer is there for scale, because otherwise that rock could be 2cm across or 2m across and no-one would be any the wiser).

And then we reached Black Ven, and LittleBear turned out to be a dab hand at finding belemnites. And then he found a beautiful little ammonite. And, of course, I have the added advantage that the three men running the fossil-hunting trip are all friends of my friend J, and my friend J had told them we were coming, so they were especially kind and friendly to LittleBear, and gave him a lovely belemnite with its tip intact, and a nice chunk of fossilised wood with calcite sparkling in it. To be honest, they were lovely people anyway, and very good with all the little people on the trip, but LittleBear was definitely the Littlest, and definitely appreciated the sense of being known by the men in charge.

And then we staggered home. Well, I staggered, weighed down not only with my rucksack of essential provisions to cope with All Emergencies That Could Befall a Bear, but also an alarming number of rocks. LittleBear ran, obviously. And wept when I couldn't (or wouldn't) run to keep up. And then he wept when I told him to blow his nose. And then he wept when I told him that if he was rude to me I'd send him to bed without any dinner. And then he wept when I told him not to throw my clothes into the shower. And then he wept because he couldn't remember why, but he wanted a cuddle. We were both a bit tired. But we had cuddles and ate chocolate chip cookies, and I said sorry for shouting, and he said sorry for being unhelpful, and we agreed we'd had a lovely day but were awfully tired.

But we washed our fossils and ourselves:

Clean fossils. And some rocks that we liked

And then, just to prove he really is one of my family, LittleBear sat in the bar with me playing cards before dinner, and I felt a glow of maternal pride.

My boy

Road Trip: Day 2

Another 130 miles completed today. And it only took four hours. The insanity of coming to a major tourist hot-spot on the August Bank Holiday weekend is beginning to sink in.

Initially, I felt quite positive about the journey... it started well, with no lane closures on the Motorway Of Eternal Roadworks. We bombed down as far as Southampton. We paused, briefly, to purchase coffee for the driver, but no food as LittleBear insisted he wasn't hungry. Perhaps warning bells should have rung?

On we went, the roads reducing from motorway, to dual-carriageway, to single-carriageway, the speed dropping inexorably, the queues growing depressingly. When we still had fifty miles and an estimated hour and a half left to travel, LittleBear informed me he felt sick. As this is a semi-regular announcement in the car, I was perhaps not as sympathetic as I should have been. To be honest, "I'm turning round and going home if you whinge again" was perhaps not a justified response, not least because I had no intention of attemping another 150 miles in the opposite direction at that point.

A few deep breathes later and I cheerfully suggested eye-spy to take his mind off it. I was turned down.

A few more deep breathes later, as we joined a particularly tedious stretch of road, nose-to-tail in both directions and with no laybys, there was an ominous burping, gurgling noise from the back seat, as LittleBear's breakfast overflowed all over his front*.

It was several noxious-smelling miles before we found a garage to stop at. And LittleBear sat calmly in the effluent, commenting only with delightful understatement, "this is NOT a good start to the holiday. But I do feel a lot better now."

The lady in the petrol station who served me as I purchased bin bags, baby wipes and dettol wipes enquired only, "Sicky child? Has to be with that collection." But I got my moppet cleaned up, in clean clothes and his seat (mostly) clean, and covered in a plastic bin liner, and on we went. Lunch did not seem like a sensible option at this point.

As we proceeded to fight our way through ever more traffic, my ray of sunshine cheerfully pointed out that he hadn't been sick on his socks or his nanoos, so it wasn't all bad. And after a while we began to drive past fantastic place names - not just Tolpuddle, but the less-well-known Affpuddle, and Puddletown. Not to mention Piddletrenthithe and Piddlehinton. And then we began to get glimpses of the sea, and drove past a sign saying "Eype, 1/2 mile" which is where I used to holiday as a child, and where I used to find fossils. We may make a detour on our way home, for old times' sake. It is a road trip after all.

Finally we made it, and are now ensconced in a 17th century inn in Lyme Regis. We arrived in time for a trip to the shore, and LittleBear is over the moon to have found his first ammonites already (that he could take home with him) as well as some fossils that were embedded in rocks rather too large to remove. And we dibbled in the sea, and made a sandcastle, and ate chocolate chip cookies at 4:30 instead of having lunch. And had sausage and mash for dinner.

And miracle-of-miracles, LittleBear was asleep in our bed by 8:30.

That's right. Our bed. It was supposed to be a twin room, but it's a double. Which was so much fun last time we did this.

The only thing I'm looking forward to less than sharing a bed with my son is getting back in the car again in two days time. I had to go and get the bag of cuddly penguins before bed, and the sensory assault from his rather unpleasant car seat after it had sat in a hot car for several hours was quite extraordinary. I can only begin to imagine how that aroma will mature over the next few days...


*  One of these days I'll learn my lesson and not let my boy over-eat soft fruit before putting him in a car. We've managed the same feat three times now.

Road Trip: Day 1

As the school summer holidays draw to a close, LittleBear and I have embarked on something of a road trip. For some time, well, OK, since we went to the Isle of Wight two years ago, I've been promising LittleBear we'd go to the Jurassic Coast and go fossil hunting. So, I've booked a long weekend away with him, and arranged a fossil-hunting tour, and we're on the way! (And, with reference to the above post, we're staying in a hotel, so I don't have to do any cooking or cleaning! Hooray!)

But it turns out the Jurassic Coast is quite a long way from East Anglia, so we're taking it in stages. And we're doing it without BigBear, who doesn't have enough leave left from work. So it's a solo-parenting road-trip. First stop: GrannyBear's house.

There is little to note about the trip so far, consisting of 5 hours at work (with a hangover), a frenzied hour of packing (with a hangover), collecting LittleBear from holiday club (with a hangover), and driving for 2.5 hours on The Road From Hell (with a hangover)*. It wasn't my favourite day of the holiday. And I'm close to falling out with my SatNav already.

Here are my issues with my SatNav:

1. It doesn't have a "don't behave like a git" setting, and is therefore quite capable of suggesting I leave the motorway at a junction, whizz round the roundabout and rejoin straightaway, just to leap-frog a few hundred yards of stationary traffic. I am not that kind of an arse, and I don't want my SatNav turning me into one. So far I have kept enough of a beady eye upon it that I have not fallen for this particular scam.

2. It doesn't seem to have a "please don't take me down almost non-existent roads" settings. This is akin to the "don't behave like a git" setting that's missing. I don't like taking the kind of short-cut that involves zooming down single-track roads or dodging through sleepy residential areas with children playing in the streets. I know it's my job as a driver not to make stupid decisions about routes, and not to blindly follow my SatNav wherever it may take me, but it's not necessarily obvious that a road is going to degenerate into the kind that has grass down the middle, and aeroplanes skimming the hedges in front of me as I make a split-second decision about whether to turn onto it. Which is what happens along Tilehouse Lane as it passes Denham Aerodrome, as I now know.

3. There is no way, upon reaching my destination, of asking the SatNav, "where the hell have I just been?" Names flicked by on signposts, road numbers jumbled together as I turned from one to another, until I finally reached safe, recognised, known turf, at which point I was beyond tired, wallowing in bewilderment and simply wanted to know what insane route I'd just taken in an effort to avoid 10 miles of the The Road From Hell. And yet the SatNav just blinked blandly at me and told me I'd arrived at my destination. Where I've been remains a mystery.

Tomorrow, as I undertake the second leg of the journey, I hope to stick to roads that at least have a line down the middle of them.


* I feel duty-bound to point out that I have reached a rather distressing time of life where a single drink results in a hangover. I find this deeply, deeply unfair, and yet it hasn't exactly stopped me drinking entirely. Yet. One glass of wine will generally make me feel rather unwell for at least an hour the following morning. My lasted-almost-all-day hangover was the result of drinking two, not particularly strong, pints of beer the previous evening. Deeply, deeply unfair.