There was the holiday...gone

Yon lad with glasses sings It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside...well my one smacks of guilt, holiday remorse. Well, it did for all of 5 mins. I experienced what the elders of the tribe used to recount.  I assumed such stories were pisoegs.  Fadó fadó, there once did exist a great ball of heat high up in a blue expanse above the grey clouds, oft occurring between May and September. It’s not a myth, it does exist. Just not here, not in these here parts. We were lucky to get away, to escape the weight of weather and woes. There was copious smatherings of factor 50, sun, turquoise sea, hot sand, ice cream, wine (mainly of the colour white), pigeon Italian, espressos, pizza, pasta, balmy evenings, steps, sweat, soccer in the piazza, pow wows with expressive locals over parking spaces, are we there yets, bites, antihistamines, snorkelling, rows, snoozing, fresh bread in the morning, realistically priced meals for five, reading, succulent tomatoes, church bells at 7, cherries, iced tea with gin and despite the teenage moaning, a major reluctance, particularly on my part, to return home.  The beaches were occupied with packs of young Adonis like young fellas and their Abercrombie abs parading their peacock tails at the small waisted slips of girls in their perfect Mediterranean skin. There was the guy who looked like something from a Paco Rabane ad, toggin into his snorkelling gear at the little cove we frequented. Not just your Lidl Thursday special offer snorkelling gear, he had harpoon n’ all. Like a modern day caveman (no Neanderthal, back, sack and cracked I reckon) he left the missus to mind the umbrella while off he went to gather some fish. Maybe he’s the Milk Tray man and it was all because the luveen loves a few anemones. There were the little old ladies in black cleaning their steps, the men chatting in the cafes. There was the wonderful next door neighbour, Tore, a spritely elderly man, sharing his plums and cucumbers over the wall. We got on and off the Blue Plane and there was our holiday...gone. 
And so we returned to the grey skies of Galway and to the accompanying ennui that ensues during the summer months. The Middle can turn off, she can chill, find things to occupy herself with. The Youngest is asking already about school books and uniforms. She’s done with the summer. Her head already back at school. Thus is the trajectory of her mind that when she returns in September her thoughts will then turn to Christmas. The Small Man is ticking all the teenage boxes. I cannot decide which of the Victorian greats he is morphing into. Dracula perhaps, with his aversion to opening the blinds in his bedroom but yet the deriding attacks, which are directed at guess who,  denote a Jekyll and Hyde like scenario, Himself hence oblivious in the main, to his moods. Apparently, there’s a pair of us in it. Helpful that is. It’s all par for the course, the adolescent slalom we have to zigzag.  Strange the way you can be threatened by your teenager assuring you of his extra month off next year. God help us all. I am planning my escape already.