Holiday this weekend

It’s only three and a half days until Scott and I are off to Boston to see Toad The Wet Sprocket in concert. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also quite apprehensive. We’re going to be away for four nights, and I’ve never been apart from Alex for that long. It’s been a good few years since Abi and I have spent that much time away from each other, too.

I’m not even sure who I’m most concerned about: Abi, for having to take sole charge of him for that long; Alex, because he’s going to realize that I’m not around, and is going to spend a certain amount of time going “Dada! Dada!” while looking around the house; or me, for missing them both.

We bought our new digital camera partly with this Boston trip in mind. It’s slips into a trouser pocket, and so is much easier to carry around than the Olympus. The plan is to take lots of photos, and find a web cafe in Boston where I can upload some of the best snapshots and email them back home. Likewise, Abi will have the Olympus at home, so she can take pictures of Alex and email them to me, so I don’t have to be denied my daily dose of boy.

Also, Alex is now willing to talk on the phone. Most of the time he just says single words, “Dada”, “Mama”, “head”, or “Po”, depending on how you prompt him, but even that little amount of contact is going to make me feel close to him. (Occasionally Alex even asks for the phone himself, if he want to speak to his mama. “Mama phone!”)

I’m sure the trip’s going to be great, though. We don’t have any plans apart from the gig on Saturday evening. We’re planning to just hang out, wander around, see some sights, do some shopping, and probably stuff ourselves silly with holiday food. In fact, the holiday food is going to start when we hit Schiphol airport on the outward flight. Café Amsterdam, one of the many dining facilities there, does a mean portion of Saté with frites. You just can’t get decent Saté in Britain, so I’m actually looking forward to this part of the journey almost as much as the concert itself.

I’ve got the tickets lying on my desk. I’m copying all of my Toad CDs to MiniDisc. Abi bought me the BBC Radio adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and that’s going onto MiniDisc as well. I’m still in the middle of Sue Grafton’s Q is for Quarry, and probably won’t finish it until Thursday, so that means that The Last Detective is going to come with me as well.

So much to do, but I love travelling for its own sake, too, so I’ll probably be spending a certain amount of the journey just sitting on the plane, looking out a window, or just enjoying the simple sensation of being on an adventure.

Cool!