My Middle-Aged Gap Year
It's 11.13am on Day One of my middle-aged gap year. Usually my Monday would look something like this. Apologies for the detail. I have plenty of time on my hands.
5.53am: Phone alarm switches on (Crystals - I like a gentle start), hit phone till alarm stops
5.54am: Go back to sleep
6.00am: Radio 4 switches on. News presenter suitably sombre. Drag myself out of bed.
6.02am: Make wife cup of tea
6.05am: Shower, shave, etc
6.23am: Wake boys up gently
6.25am: Get dressed
6.35am: Wake boys up again with firm voice
6.37am: Tidy kitchen
6.40am: Shout at boys to get out of bed
6.45am: Faff around
6.50am: Check bus for school is running on time - it's a public bus, it rarely is.
6.52am to 7.10am: Generally nag/cajole/plead with boys to get ready
7.11am: Walk to train station. Leave boys to my wife to get them to bus stop. Breathe deeply.
7.21am: Board train to London
8.05am: Get on underground
8.20am: Arrive at office
8.22am: Open up emails. Sigh.
8.24am: Close emails and ask what everyone got up to at the weekend
8.50am: Go on coffee run
9.15am: Open up emails again. Sigh again.
Whereas today, looked something like this:
6.00am: Radio 5 Live switches on. Presenters far too enthusiastic even for the first day of my gap year. I tried to change the alarm (not the radio station) last night to 6.30am. Clearly failed.
6.02am: Get out of bed. Radio is on wife's side. Turn off radio. Go to the loo. Go back to bed.
6.04am: Fall asleep
6.50am: Wake up in a panic. Phone alarm did not go off at 6.27am. Turns out I'd set it for Saturday only.
6.52am: Go straight to shouting at boys to get out of bed.
7.30am: Drop wife to station as she's getting train into London today
7.40am: Return home to shout at boys again who still haven't managed to brush their teeth despite repeatedly saying we need to leave as soon as I get back from dropping their Mum.
7.50am: Drive to school. Temporary traffic lights broken. Permanently on red. Have to get out to walk to car in front to point this out to driver.
8.20am: Drop kids on time. Breathe.
8.40am: Return home. Slightly frazzled. And now realise I don't know what I'm going to do.
9am to 11.30am: Research best blog sites - this one got most votes, possibly pretend votes. But good enough for me. Spend inordinate amount of time trying to convince AI tool that My Middle-Aged Gap Year is not a travel blog for teenagers on a voyage of self-discovery. Also try to remove stock photos. Fail.
11.30am: to 11.45am: Write first blog.
11.47am: Reflect on my first blog. Think it's quite rubbish. But figure no-one will read it anyway. Consistency of punctuation is terrible. Full stops after some points and not after others. My old boss would have hated that.
11.46am: Try to publish blog.