Thursday 25 July 2019

The big experiment

After a disastrous summer holiday 2018 … a tent near Carcassonne in the heat of France with long car journeys, new hotels and a gradual increase in our consumption of French McDonalds … we decided in the Autumn of that year to consider something different for 2019.
How about we spend the whole Summer somewhere?
Transitions and Autism often don't mix too well. Journeys, change, being stuck in a car, not knowing what tonight's bedroom will look like, not knowing where we'll go tomorrow, too hot to enjoy running around outside … Then, once you get used to a place - maybe after 7-10 days - you have to think about leaving, and doing the whole travel/uncertainty routine all over again.

So how about we decamp to somewhere remote, for the whole summer. Minimise the travelling, maximise the holiday, I suggested. But how would we do it?

A couple of things needed sorting out:
  1.  Vix's work
  2.  My work
Well, item 1 was easy: Vix suggested she would just quit her job in time for the Summer, provided we went somewhere "amazing" … Ah, OK, I was kind of thinking reasonably low budget, maybe an Airbnb near a beach in Cornwall, especially if we're giving up jobs to go there. But Vix applied for term-time only working, and it was accepted.

What about item 2? Well, there was precedent (I'd seen) at my work, so I requested a remote-working arrangement for the Summer, with me working 3 days a week... and they too accepted.

Crikey... then it was just a question of where to go.

So, here we are, on the eve of travelling to Italy for five weeks (and a day), with the kids' first every experience of flying, and a beautiful old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with pool, trampoline, table tennis table, an olive grove and …

… apparently lots of scorpions. But hey, you can't have everything.