Authors Electric

As we enter May, the sun is shining and some of us are looking forward to our summer holidays. No doubt some of us booked it months ago, although some of us favour spontaneity and book ‘last minute.com’! As someone who works a lot of the time at hours which some would find unsavoury – evenings, weekends and stepping off stage at 10 pm, I thought about how much I enjoy work. In fact, I feel a bit lost without it. However, I still need a break. So, what do holidays mean to us, and how can we make the most of them?   Sometimes you just have to stop. In our hectic world, we must find a way to genuinely switch off the noise, as tempting as it may be to find the hotel with the fastest internet connection. For me, it’s difficult to separate home and work life because I mostly work at home. There’s always the ironing pile looming like an undiscovered mountain range, or the depths of the dishwasher to dive into; housework often squats at the back of my mind threatening to de-rail the writin...

We’re on holiday in France and it’s been lovely. Of course. That’s what holidays are supposed to be, right? A lovely, relaxing time away. The problem is, several of my children don’t like change. I don’t like change, but that’s more about big changes. Like the death of the Queen, people singing God Save the King, and changes in the family around us. Or the fact that French coffee tastes different. My children, however, are rather optimistic as well as unable to remember unhappy moments, which makes them embrace change until the change actually arrives. They love going on holiday until we start packing. They love French pizzas until the pizzas arrive. We still go on holidays and they all ate their pizzas, but it leaves them feeling exhausted and I drink more coffee than I should. I also end up doing more crowd control than has been needed for the last few years, which is sad.  I get tired from simply wandering around the shop, trying to locate the cheese. This isn’t very hard to...