"Tell me why...."

….. “I don’t like Mondays!”

So go the words of the song. And this was the refrain in my head for much of yesterday morning. Churlish of me I know, but there it is.

“But why,” I hear you ask “so irascible this particular Monday?”

I’ll endeavour to tell you, but in doing so I fear I will alienate you, gentle reader, so I ask you not to judge too harshly. The real problem is of course, not Mondays, or even this last Monday in and of itself. It’s what I was doing this particular Monday, in comparison with the preceding couple of weeks.

Regular readers will know that the past fortnight saw the Jest family annual peregrination to the sun (on this occasion on a floating palace around the Adriatic). In essence we have been pampered almost beyond endurance, whilst soaking up the finest sights that the central portion of the Med has to offer. We have braved “La Serenissima” by gondola after hauling ourselves out of bed at Day-Break to witness our arrival in this fairest of cities at a stately pace from thirteen stories up—and if anyone ever offers you the chance to do the same, don’t think twice. We have witnessed the miracle of reconstruction that is the pristine Old Town of Dubrovnik. Our pallid English bodies have braved 36 degree heat in Corfu…. I could rave on at greater length, but even I am coming to hate myself as I do, so I’ll leave it there, but you get the picture.

Mid way through our trip the eldest learned he has aced his GCSEs (the first set of really BIG exams in Blighty for our readers from other jurisdictions) so all is most definitely right with the world. (A “proud Dad” moment for you all there—I’m hoping it will ingratiate me a bit after the alienation possibly engendered by the paragraph above…)

Then we come back to dear old Blighty. It’s cold and it’s raining and it feels like it’s been that way all the time we’ve been away, and will be so all the time until we can somehow get away again. And on Monday morning the surgery goes hopelessly awry as every single patient asks me how the holiday went, just to heighten the juxtaposition.

Still if it keeps up this way we’ll soon be able to get around Ambridge by gondola too, so maybe it will all work out right in the end. Just keep me away from the gun cabinet, that’s all….