I’m just back from my summer holidays. Had a nice family trip to France. I arranged it many months ago – booked the ferry, campsite, insurance and so on. Leaving nothing to chance, I made sure that everything was ready in advance and all I had to do was relax.
I put a map of France up on the kitchen wall at home. This way we could use it as a form of noteboard and add ideas or places to include should we wish to change the plan.
I made use of the web to research various activities in the area and planned each day to make sure that I got the most out of my days away. To ensure that I wasn’t late, I added everything to my phone’s calendar knowing that each day, I would know exactly what was planned – “no surprises” as they say.
On the long motorway drive to the campsite, I amused myself by counting the number of sports cars by brand (Porsche won with 47). Another game was to count the number of non-French cars by country. I found myself mentally creating lists to pass the time.
One thing I love about France is the bakeries. Whilst always having regular croissants, our local bakery alternated between chocolate croissants, almond croissants and a cinnamon roll. They seemed to follow a pattern by day – almond, chocolate, cinnamon, almond, cinnamon, chocolate. They repeated the three but in each iteration, they seemed to alternate the cinnamon and chocolate. Not sure why they did this but it was great fun spotting the pattern.
In the evenings, there would be an event held for all families in the campsite such as a football tournament. I managed to blag it so that I could manage the scoring system. I compiled an easy to understand table system and allocated points for and against. I also recorded the number of corners, fouls and throw-ins given (including how many of these resulted in goals). I probably did more than I was asked but sure it’s part of the fun! I managed to show how the Dutch kids tended to score more from corners whilst the Germans scored more from frees.
It was great – two weeks of relaxing, spending time following a carefully planned schedule, amusing ourselves by compiling lists of information, looking at everyday events for patterns – you know the way – getting away from it all!
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