School holidays are upon us and time to relax in the morning, rather than the mad breakfast rush and shouting to clean teeth, put on school uniform and "where's your bag and drink bottle". We can stay in PJs for a little longer and catch our breath before deciding what to do for the day.
Hopefully we will be able to head out on a walk to town, with my eldest riding his bike and me pushing the other two in their double stroller. I manage to get out during some school days. It's not a difficult walk and we can manage to pick up some supplies at the shops and, if the kids are lucky, have a milkshake at the coffee shop.
We are also looking forward to a two-week holiday in Queensland at the end of the week. We will be visiting friends that my husband I used to work with in London 14 years ago. Those fun-filled days are a lifetime away. We all have three children now and how life has changed. We girls were on our must-do working holiday to Britain. We met at our new workplace in Fleet Street, London. We also met our prospective English husbands at our workplace. Days were spent working like the clappers at an arbitration here, a deposition there or a court hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice or some other minor court room. Then at night, time to relax and have a well-earned drink or two, or three, etc, before heading off on the train, to sleep it off, only to wake and start it all again.
I spent a wonderful 18 months doing this. I met lots of new friends and travelled to various places during court breaks or on weekends and it was a liberating time for me. I learned that I loved to live and work in new places and I found a new-found confidence in my stenographic abilities. I saw all sorts of possibilities, and it was probably that 18 months that gave me the confidence to leave Hansard and leap into the new world of captioning and then on to the UN and the ICTR in Tanzania.
But for now it's back to the dishes, clean the floor and get some sleep before the onslaught of nappies, tantrums and kiddy cuddles and kisses.
