… is usurping “stiction” as my favourite bridged bit of alliteration. This mix of “Stay” and “Vacation” is a timely reminder of what it means to be a Yorkshireman. “Ah well, tha knows, could’ve got to foreign parts, but they’ll speak funny and there’s nowt to be found of basic staples such as burnt-whippet-surprise*. Anyroad up, God’s country is right tha, so why would you want to risk bloody frenchies y’soft lad?”

So this week, surrounded as we are by sparkies, plumbers and the like – serious men sporting eared pencils under beetling brows – we’re holidaying right here at ground zero of the previously cherished budget. So far this has involved much the same activity as one would undertake somewhere rather more expensive, although I’ll concede with more floors, foreign parts

Swimming, cakes, exploring muddy forests, cake, swapping depressing rain for amusing films**, eating out, eating more cake, wine, sofa and TV following tired kids heading bedwards, and much more of the same tomorrow.

Which in a further cost cutting move, I’ve decided that£50+ for four of us to drown in the fast running Wye is money for nothing. I’ll merely re-cast one of the old baths into a makeshift kayak, and head off downstream onto what used to be the road outside. Stunning idea I thought, typically British man with own shed thinking outside the tub, and providing decent, low cost family entertainment.

Three pairs of rolling eyes tells me I am alone in my love of the idea – even the dog looked sceptical and he’ll try anything once. Honestly it’s not until you’ve seen a Labrador eat a spider – with apparent relish – that you realise quite how hungry they must be ALL THE TIME. He’s even had a nibble of one of my biking socks of doom which are essentially lethal to any land going mammal from ten feet or less.

Talking of bikes, of course there has to be some of that later in the week. Parental care morphs to parental abandonment as I attempt to impress a man I’ve never met with my riding skills. That’ll not take long then – probably all the time a crash-bang-wallop plunge down the vertical trails recently discovered on the scary side of the forest.

Assuming any sort of multi limbed survival, the next day is all mine to lead a glorious day long ride over the Long Mynd bathed in summer sunshine. Let’s examine that last sentence shall we for possible inaccuracies; basically it’s all of it – more likely I’ll be getting a few old friends lost in the rain for hours on end before a random trail source shall lead us to a pub. Where we shall stay.

Sounds good to me. The way things are going, we might rent out the garden to tourists 🙂

* in times of hardship, rat or ferret was substituted. The surprise wasn’t that it tasted like chicken, more it tasted like shit.

** Ice Age 3. Fully expected it to be a tired re-run of an exhausted franchise, but found myself giggling along with the kids. But the nut gag has really been done to death now.