Fran’s School of Hard Knocks

Ready Steady Travel

In the course of the last two years I have travelled, both with and without my family, on over twenty-five trips, to Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, London… I have become so accustomed to travel in a relatively short time, that I have my kit down to a fine art and I know exactly how long it will take to get to the airport. (Tip: Travel is best in the early morning, when traffic and flight delays are minimal – a taxi to the airport at five am is ideal.)

There are advantages to all this: A certain welcome nonchalance when packing for a holiday, an acute awareness of when my passport needs renewed (December 2019, daughter’s passport ditto) and a familiarity with airport queues that has taught me how best to catch the flight when there are three thousand people in the passport queue and only one immigration official checking passports very slowly… So here are my top tips for trouble free travel.

~ Travel with hand-luggage only; and in the spirit of hand-luggage, keep your bags modest. Do not be tempted to pack to the max and get through the checks with fingers crossed. Budget airlines have small overhead lockers and rather unexpected attitudes to luggage that looks too obviously packed to the max.

~ Check in before you travel, and, if at all possible, obtain your return flight boarding pass as well. If you fail to do this, you may find that, arriving at the airport to check-in, you are the last to be allocated a seat on an overbooked flight. Some airlines are fairly shameless about double booking flights, so the earlier you obtain a boarding pass, the better. (You know you will have a wait, if the boarding pass you print off has no seat allocated on it.)

~ Avoid buying duty free, unless you can fit it comfortably in your hand-luggage (or you have forgotten to buy a present for the grande dame to whose reunion you are flying). There is nothing more irritating to flexible, fast travelling than a collection of plastic carriers attached to the handles of hand luggage.

~ Learn to get near the front of the queue, and to state your case clearly to harassed officials coping with returning football crowds, large conferences, etc. “Excuse me, sir, I have to catch a flight in half an hour,” is far more likely to get a positive response than simply shoving to the front of the queue and demanding that someone do something. That said, a bit of elegant elbow shoving is occasionally indispensable.

~ Look confident, and confidence will aid you. Try not to burst into tears when faced with a desperate situation. Assume that everyone is already doing their best in difficult circumstances, and your gratitude and patience will be the best gift to every situation, turning overworked airline staff into our allies.

Happy travelling!

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Mercury in retrograde

Apparently, because Mercury is in retrograde at the moment – I sort of know what that means, but, in any case, since April is Angel month and my angels do a fantastic job of looking after me, I don’t worry too much about all this – I should be careful, back up my computer files, generally be a bit cautious and double check anything important, be canny and softly spoken, etc etc.

Too bad that, inevitably, life must go on in the meantime….

On Friday last week, just in time for the weekend to begin, as I was doing something I wish I hadn’t bothered to do, my computer crashed. Just like that, out of the blue and for no reason that I could see. I hadn’t pressed any buttons, closed down any applications the wrong way, or downloaded any stealth viruses, as far as I could tell… But knowing about this retrograde thing felt suddenly quite reassuring, as though the collapse of my PC might actually have been expected, and an extra reason – if one were needed – not to do too much, too fast.

I’m having to learn to delegate, AKA trust other people to do their jobs. If I have any lesson to learn this month, it is about the delights of delegation, since, if I am to have time to write, and to rest and laugh and eat and sleep without nightmares, I simply have to ask, and let go. There is  no other way to manage the plethora of expectations that otherwise crowd around me.

A useful lesson in this retrograde, full-moon season of Easter, is that, once I have done my best, I have no choice but to trust and let go of all expectation, except, naturally, the best one – the most peaceful one – I can muster.

Thanks for reading.

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The Easter Holidays

Easter is upon us, and so I shall be taking a short break over the Easter holidays.

I shall be glad to have a good reason to rest, and to take time to be with family, to reconnect with the notion of family and joint enterprises… This working alone and from home is a bit too solo, sometimes, for my liking.

As I may have said previously, my mother has bought a property near us, so we shall be checking it out, and buying a few bits of home stuff so that Mum can move in soon, when she would like to. Husband and daughter prove immensely supportive in this new and rather unexpected undertaking, and I am immensely reassured to have their input and good ideas. It might even turn out to be fun, now, to have a family project in which we can all share: the jobs, the keeping tidy, the other place to go…

I don’t have much of a passion for property, but my mother is from a different generation, whose parents lived through the great depression and saw their hard-earned savings vanish overnight, so it makes sense, from my mother’s point of view, to have a place to stay, and some security in bricks and mortar.

And it gives me something else to learn from, to become better at and to understand. So I’m grateful for this chance.

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Reasons to exercise

Speaking as a total amateur who used to be averse to most exercise – because it felt too much like compulsion – here are ten great reasons to exercise. Walking, cycling, swimming, dancing, ski-ing, fencing, basketball. Any would do.

Why ten? I guess if I can think of ten great reasons, then I have no excuses at all for being lazy.

~ The idea of going swimming helps me to get up early in the morning and spend happy time with my husband and daughter at the breakfast table. Result!

~ If I swim most days, I don’t have to spend too long at the pool, and can be home within the hour.

~ I feel great after a swim.

~ If the rest of the day is busy, having had a swim keeps me calm.

~ If the rest of the day is rubbish, I can always feel a sense of achievement, because I’ve managed to exercise.

~ Planning to swim every day makes me very organised, so I spend evenings tidying up the house instead of slouched uncomfortably in front of the tv. Which gives me a quicker start the next day.

~ I meet wonderful people at the pool, and am reminded, again, that we are all different, with varying preferences.

~ My brain speeds up, as does my typing, because I am relaxed and more focussed after a swim. I waste less time in other tasks, too.

~ My mood improves if I swim every day, as does my diet. (That’s really two reasons, but I wanted to include both and stay within the ten.)

~ I learn to prioritise more cleanly, and to do what I choose for more of the time, so that when I ‘have to’ cook tea or wash clothes, I spend less time worrying about it. (AKA ‘Just bloody do it!’)

That’s a great ten, almost eleven reasons to exercise, and no-where have I had to say, “It’s good for me”, the kind of reason that is, at least in this household, a bit of a guilt-trip turn off.

Thanks for reading!

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