When things don’t go to plan….

Note: Now that I’ve written this, I realise that you don’t need to read this. It’s just me, documenting everything for myself in a cathartic way. What you want to read, is the next post, that I’m about to write. But anyway, I’m still pressing publish as I know my Mum will want to read this 😉

There’s so much that I could and maybe should be doing right now. But what I want to do, is write this post. So I am!
I’ve been really intrigued by the way I’ve responded to things not going to plan in the last week. We were offered the chance to stay in a chalet that a friends mum and dad own, right on the coast. Sounded idyllic. So we packed up, set off and all was good. Until the first time William was sick. All over himself and our fluffy rug that we’d taken for us all to snuggle up under whilst looking out at the sea. Undeterred, we cleaned him up, changed his clothes, rolled up the blanket to try and trap the contents and the smell and set off again. Until it happened again. And then, a third time. By this point, we’re out of all the clothes we have for William. And we’re out of towels and the bedding we’d planned to use at the chalet was also smelly and covered in sick. Three times.

We arrived at the chalet and it wasn’t just rain. It was driving rain, the proper, wind pushing into your face, driving rain. Being a chalet that’s meant for warmer weather, we didn’t have anywhere to wash or dry the clothes so we had to admit defeat. The chalet wasn’t going to work. At this point, we’d normally have give up and come home, to have a weekend full of resentment and arguing – and that’s just me and Lovely Bloke. So instead, I hopped on my phone and did some research. The fifth hotel I tried, was the Marriott at Sprowston, just 5 minutes from Norwich city centre. It was £185 for the night, which was a fair bit of money, but it had a pool and we could clean everything up there, so we went with it.

Once I’d booked it over the phone, we went for lunch at what turned out to be the worst chippy ever in Sea Palling, and spent £5 on the two pence slot machines in the arcades. I’m sharing this because Lovely Bloke doesn’t do chippy food – he just doesn’t like it. So it was a big thing for him to volunteer that we should do that. And even though we were tired and smelly, we went with it, for the boys, who were So Excited to have two pence pieces to play with, not least because they got tickets from the machines, that they could use to ‘buy’ a toy. You never got that in my day – you know, back when I was a lass 😉

Anyway, we trudge to the Marriott and arrive in yet more driving rain. The car had made a couple of funny noises en route – we looked at each other and questioned it, but it seemed to only happen twice, so twas fine. We washed up what we could and rinsed off the clothes. We dried what we could. We got bin bags for the rest and tried to seal them in in the boot of the car. Next day, we bought new clothes for William and a couple of industrial air fresheners for the boot and car. We didn’t manage to do the castle in Norwich on the Sunday though – the rain made us all grumpy so it was back to the hotel for more splashing and swimming and playing around.

So of course, yesterday, when there was still a heavy wind, but no rain, was a very welcome day! Hours and hours and hours playing in Norwich castle followed with a trip to the shop where we bought an axe, sword and books on plants and dinosaurs – as you do, in a castle. I’m going to write a post about it – it’s brilliant.

We decided to go back to the hotel and look for somewhere we could go out to, for dinner, as we’d wanted to go to Holt – one of our favourite places. But of course. No, it wasn’t to be. The clunk, or bump – I don’t know how to describe the noise, was truly enough to give us all a shock. The first time, we stopped the car and got out to look underneath. The second time, we looked to see if anything had fallen off!! But there was nothing happening. We *knew* that something was wrong, but were not sure what. On coming out of the car park – coming out onto the uber busy rat run ring road, the suspension coil fell off – totally shard! I think that was the point at which we decided it was time to come home.

Today, we have come home in style, in a recovery truck. Lovely Bloke was excited as it’s linked to his family and their business. The boys were non plussed and went to sleep. I tried to, but kept being woken to have recovery truck internal features pointed out to me. I kid you not. That’s my Husband :)) So, that’s how we’ve come to be at home on this Tuesday afternoon, with us snuggled under a very thin blanket that’s making us appreciate our big grey furry one. Lovely Bloke has taken the car to the garage and is now departed to the laundrette to wash our grey furry blanket that smells god awful. We don’t know if it can be rescued. But he’s going to try. I’m washing everything, tumble drying and packing it in the hope that the car might be fixed so we can still visit my mum and dad for Easter weekend itself.

If you’re still reading this, congratulations. No, really, it’s been a long old post, hasn’t it? It’s just struck me that so much has happened that previously would have broken me. I’m a recovering type A person, who likes things to run to plan, on a timetable and for things to run smoothly. This comedy of things going wrong would previously have overwhelmed me. But instead, it’s brought a whole world of brilliant things to happen and I’m going to write another blog post about all of that in a moment!