Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

I did not sleep very well last night. I had a minor sickness bug and my calves ached where I had overdone it at the gym on Friday. As a result I disturbed Marion, and thus it was 9am before we opened our eyes. Further to that while Marion then bustled around I had another few minutes in bed. All told it was 10am before we made it down for breakfast.

The good thing was because there was no pressure on us to do anything; we just sat and talked for an hour. Well talked is not strictly true, we sat and planned the logistics of our French road trip in June. Now we know exactly what the itinerary is, basically we are taking a week driving to Provence where we will stay in a cottage for two weeks; we will then spend a week returning. No problem you say as we have a large saloon car with a spacious boot, even allowing for the vast quantities of wine that Marion wants to bring back.

The problem is that we are taking our mini convertible, for those of you who have seen Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan driving around Italy in The Trip 2 you will get the picture, minus the references to Byron. Well the Mini is a superb car for touring, it is very comfortable, has superb performance, and handles like a dream. The convertible element in the hot Provencal sunshine is to be drooled over. The problem is that it has a very small luggage capacity, and for those of you who know us we are remarkably bad packers; we need somewhere for the kitchen sink.

So there was much discussion about minimum underwear requirements, and no we are not going commando to save space. After much discussion Marion drew up a sort of his and hers list. What was significant was that her list was twice as long as mine, not I think in the spirit of the whole enterprise. We came up with such innovations as ditching our toilet bags for more utilitarian versions, though quite why we have to take a soap pom pom I do not know, certainly not on my list of essentials.

Really the conversation is immaterial, it was because we felt a little sleepy that we were able to have it. I suspect that had we got up raring to go it would not have happened. So our lack of sleep had a silver lining. Tonight we are babysitting our grand children so I suspect that the lack of sleep tomorrow morning may be for the opposite reason.