Day Tripper

The subject of holidays came up over a goodbye lunch with a colleague - he'd recently come back from Lisbon and was rapidly turning me shades of green with describing how stunning it all was. Musuems, stunning architecture, cheap alcohol, friendly people, did I mention cheap wine. And then there was the inevitable "so are you having a holiday this year".

Mindful that it is now November and I'm not exactly built for wintersports (I'm short and have bad balance) - it isn't exactly likely. Although I am going to Whitby in a few weeks for a murder event but now that the days are drawing in, the prospect (of whitby) of cold, rain, darkness and a bloody lengthy train journey is appealing less and less.

I think I'm suffering holiday envy, first the Lisbon guy, then my friend currently living it up in Las Vegas, I'm surrounded by people and their holidays. The idea of a week off doing nothing much tends to freak me out slightly and as much as I love my own company, I think that I could even bore myself by day 3. And then there's the horror of coming back to either a mountain of work or the "guess what - I'm your new line manager" scenario - although currently at work if you are too long in the lav you run the same risk - meaning that any chilling out achieved by not being at work lasts approximately 1 minute after you hit the email and in my case, usually a day before that.

Logical conclusion to draw therefore is that taking holidays is a baaad thing. I end up feeling somewhat inadequate that I can't seem to get my life together enough to actually want to pack up my bags, head to the travel agents and demand to be put on the first plane out of here - even more irritating is the knowledge that I've got a stack of leave gathering virtual dust - pretty soon I'll have a compost of leave. What is point of being rich in leave but poor in time.

So why do I feel that the one thing I really want is to be anywhere but where I am right now?