A lot more to it than that

Two weeks ago I was still very much on holiday. But being on holiday, I’ve been reminded, is nothing like talking about that same holiday once you’re back. And by last week I’d succeeded in reducing the whole three weeks of it into little more than a few well-chosen adjectives and an interesting creature or two.

Meanwhile I’ve been catapulted back into the relentless swing of ordinary life, and there’s been, in addition, the pressing need to shop, cook and generally tend to myself once more – a shock after being in charge of nothing more than a kettle and an automatic hire car for a whole three weeks. So the very different challenges of life at home (and work) have taken over, and now I’m in grave danger of allowing almost all that gallivanting to recede into the long ago and the far away.

Perhaps it’s just that interesting experiences don’t travel particularly well and are best left where they are, or perhaps it’s me, not the experiences, that are the problem. Whichever one it is, I’m struggling to communicate. There are photographs, of course, but even I know that showing a hundred photographs is not the way to present one’s holiday to someone showing polite and passing interest.

Holidays and normal life, I now conclude, just don’t really mix. I have no problem with that, but it really does amaze me that the best I can do now that I’m back is tell you about the dolphins and the whale. There was a lot more to it than that.