Today we arrived back home after what feels like months away, but which was really only 15 days. We spent six days in Mallorca, where my lovely inlaws looked after the children, I found myself busily editing my next book whenever trips to places with names like ‘Aqualand’ came up, and the sun shone without stopping.
After that we went to London and stayed for a few nights in a house belonging to friends who were on holiday, which meant we were able to pretend to be the sort of people who live in a beautiful house in West London; it also meant the children got to learn how to cross roads and use the Tube. They were soon frowning at people who put their feet on the seats and racing for the empty space at the end of the carriage.
The five of us dashed around, and visited museums, galleries, the maze in Trafalgar Square. We walked up the Monument and went to Toy Story 3 in the Trocadero. We were proper tourists and it was wonderful. The Polka Theatre in Wimbledon, a children’s theatre, was a great discovery, though by then I would have been grateful for any form of entertainment that involved sitting down in a darkened room.
We are now back in Cornwall and although it’s raining, it’s good to be home after our blast of city life. London was wildly exciting for a few days, but it’s good to be back. Now I have a book to finish, The Perfect Lie out in paperback next week, and I’m going to be talking at the Penzance Literary Festival a few days after that. James and the children are off school for another three weeks, but I am very much back at work.
