“It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.”
Dracula by Bram Stoker
How is it possible to love your family so much and yet be ready to let them go back to their home, far far away after just three and a half weeks … and then the minute they leave, immediately wish you could have them back?
Okay, so admittedly today’s quote is a little dark and over dramatic, but when I came home last night to our quiet, empty house and it started drizzling, my heart was sore. I didn’t get to squeeze my three little minions and say goodbye properly. The train came and before I knew it all the luggage and all five of my precious loved ones where loaded and speeding away from me.
What a lovely summer the Secret Seven have had together!
Adventures with:- beer-making, BBQ’ing, DIY, scooting, ravens, towers, boats, tunnels, cheese sandwiches and nuts, digestive biscuits, dinosaurs, caves, forests and ponies, boot sales and charity shopping, sabotaged by ice-cream vans blocking the exit to the park and forcing us to buy 99’s, sun and rain, Horrid History and Nasty Nature books, Bob the Minion and of course tea and rusks … and all to the soundtrack of S-J singing “I believe I can fly”!
As in all stories, the reader gets a sense when the adventure is coming to an end.
Three distinct plot points heralded the beginning of the end for the Secret Seven’s super summer.
First my darling husband began to seek respite in quiet places to start thinking about his return to work. En suite, my eldest niece began to repeat the mantra: “I’m really going to miss you …”. Then finally, during a special bath-time conversation, S-J informed me that it was time to go back to Zambia as Molly, Dusty and Roxy would be missing them and quite frankly she was now missing the maid! Well, I say – from a four-year-old!
So, as many families all over the UK leave on their summer holidays, we return to work.
I will not miss the pile of shoes at the front door, but I will miss the feet that inhabit them.
My final word for today – living with 3 little girls these past three and a half weeks, I can’t help being reminded of some well-known songs from two scrumptious musicals – enjoy!
Let’s hear it from Carol Burnett in the 1982 version of Annie (In my opinion, the ONLY version):
And, though dated, the great Maurice Chevalier from a little musical called Gigi:
Nyamazela 
Glad you had a good time together, keep these summer memories in a little warm place in your heart, to revisit when it’s cold and dark outside, they will carry you through a lot.
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