Forever Amber

You know how in the aftermath of Black Friday, I was all, “WAH! Advance posts deleted! Can’t go on holiday! Life over!”?

Mercifully, it turned out not to be true:

Those are the Maspalomas sand dunes in Gran Canaria. The two little people you can see? That’ll be me and Terry, in the two weeks right before Christmas, although we’ll hopefully be walking in the same direction as each other.

It’s not the holiday we’d been planning. Before the Week from Hell (probably known to the rest of you simply as “last week”) hit, we’d had all kinds of ambitious plans involving long-haul flights and multiple connections, and me magically turning into the kind of person who doesn’t hate flying with every atom of her being.

I know! What the hell were we thinking?

But then Heart Internet deleted all of the advance posts I’d written in preparation for this mythical holiday. And Terry’s car decided it had just taken its last ever trip – destination: the side of the motorway. Suddenly, all was lost. But not really! Because, dashing to the rescue came Erin and Fi and Sian and Gemma, and all of the other wonderful people who either sent me guest posts for The Fashion Police or otherwise helped keep me sane. Thanks to them, plus hours and hours of work on the part of Terry and I, we managed to get everything back on track. We have matchsticks propping open our eyes and my fingertips have been worn down to little stumps with all the typing, but we did it. And if anyone ever tries to tell you the Internet is a cold and heartless place, full of perverts and weirdos, I will tell you… well, actually, I’ll tell you you’re totally right about that, I mean SERIOUSLY, you should see my spam folder some days. But as well as those people, there are also some absolute GEMS, and I’m very, very lucky to know so many of them. Aww, group hug, you guys!

Ahem. Anyway…

The car is still screwed (special, mechanical term for you there) which means we’ve had to revise our expectations a little, and go for a short-haul, no frills kinda break, but at this point we’re just so grateful to be able to go anywhere AT ALL that we’re not complaining. We’ve actually been to Gran Canaria before, years ago, and enjoyed it, and as long as I don’t get the flu again, like I did on our last winter holiday, I’m sure we’ll have tons o’ fun.

Conclusion: I like this week much more than I liked last week. MUCH more.