The weekend away.

I should apologise that it’s been so long since I’ve blogged, but that would be hugely inadequate. So I’ll say pardon my absence, I was undertaking an intense period of research that concluded in... no tangible findings, but some good (and happy) stories. And getting destroyed by work, but that is a rant for a different time.

I was fortunate enough to go on a proper weekend away. When I say proper, I mean one that was organised as a surprise by the significant other (a story for another day). You see, as a girl who has always wanted to be able to say ‘I went away this weekend with ...’, I tended to do all the organising and the ... did the turning up. But this time was different. I was whisked from my abode late on a Friday evening, having packed almost everything I own and nothing I could wear (in rain, and near freezing temperatures) and taken to my rest station for the night. We departed bright and early (ish) and 2 hours of tarmac and lingala later, checked into a lovely little hotel by a lovely river, having held hands the whole way. This is a really long time when one is driving a manual car.

Then it struck me...there’s something about being away that makes you want to be exceptionally deviant. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the idea that no one in that town knows who you are, or is likely to ever see you again, or perhaps you feel like it’s a new beginning...safe reinvention of the person even if it’s only for a weekend. Either way, the deviance began before I’d left home, and it involved buying suggestive clothing off a website adorned purely in fuscia and black. I was harbouring less than honourable thoughts and making adequate preparations to fulfil them.

This, coupled with ridiculously high heels, an extravagant candlelit dinner and a bottle of champagne should have made for a very rewarding evening for the significant other. It was going swimmingly. We were holding hands at dinner, doing that annoying ‘we’ll take up the whole pavement as we walk because we are holding hands’ thing that inspires one to commit grievous bodily harm, stealing glances over a shared dessert and rehashing intimate stories. Hearts fluttered somewhere in the distance, and the nearby church bells chimed in rehearsal for a wedding the next day. It could not have been more perfect. Except it could...

It appears that this ‘deviant behaviour’ extended into sleeping habits as well. We got back to the hotel where a rose lay near a box of chocolates on quite a large bed (we made quite an impression at check-in). I decided to test the pillows, you know, assess them for comfort. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the pillows in hotels are always obscenely comfortable. Exactly five minutes later (it could have been only two, who knows), I had passed out, mouth wide open, winter coat wrapped around me, arms flung every which way and the occasional snort intermingled with my rather heavy breathing. I have to say that even I was quite impressed by this feat. It was only midnight...that would be the starting point of most of my Saturday nights out. Needless to say, I had a lot of explaining/making up to do the next morning, especially when I woke up half falling off the bed, still in my coat and a rather distant man underneath the duvets not quite beside me. He had this pained expression suggesting I had robbed him, and to be honest, myself, of a tasty tryst. For shame. For shame. For shame.

I’ve just bought the Christmas gift that I hope will be the perfect atonement for my misdeed but it remains thin ice at the moment... I have the feeling that normal service has resumed, and I will have to organise all further 'weekends away'. So much for change.