Yes, folks, it’s true! The least popular section of my blog ever is back by… well. I was going to say “by popular demand”, but that would be an exaggeration too far, even for me. But! It is true to say that some a few two of you requested to see some more of my holiday photos, so the Friday Photo limps from the ashes! (“GOOD GRIEF, don’t encourage her!” I hear the rest of you cry. “Or she’ll still be talking about this freaking holiday at Christmas.” And you know what? I probably will.)

This is probably my favourite photo of the whole trip. It’s Clearwater beach at sunset, photographed by Terry, using our swish new camera, which was purchased shortly before we left. Did I mention we purchased a swish new camera shortly before we left? Well, we did. It is technically “my” camera, and was really bought for “me” to take blog photos with (not for this blog! Don’t worry!), but I think I took maybe five shots with it in three weeks, because Terry guarded it like a jealous lover, carrying it with him at all times, and barking instructions at the rest of us, like a Nikon-wielding Sergeant Major. In most of the photos that resulted from the holiday, we may look like we’re smiling, but our faces are actually just frozen in fear as we stand there with Terry shouting, “AMBER! Take that look off your face! NORMA! Hold your leg at a 32 degree angle to your body! NO! That’s thirty ONE degrees! That’s spoiled it completely, we’ll have to start again: PLACES, EVERYONE!”

I swear I’m not exaggerating about this. On one particularly memorable occasion, we were having dinner when Terry, attempting to take a photo of all four of us, turned to me and barked, “AMBER! Put your head in the middle of the table!” And he couldn’t understand why my parents and I thought that was funny. I mean, I know it might seem like my head screws right off, but it obviously doesn’t. Because if it did, I’d probably have left it at Sanford airport by now, or on top of the car roof, or some such place.

You know what? I’ve come this far, so I may as well just show you the photo of my head in the middle of the table, no? Here it is:

Terry was NOT happy with this, let me tell you. For, in attempting to follow his instructions and place my head in the middle of the table, I succeeded only in making myself look like a giant growth sprouting out of the side of his head. Athena and Zeus, or just Terry and his Terrible Twin? You decide.

I can’t even BEGIN to tell you the grief my dad got over this attempt at a self-timed shot, which he failed to take his designated place for at the allotted time:

You can tell by my mum’s face and Terry’s fixed grin that we all knew what was going to happen here, can’t you? As punishment, Terry made my dad stand a little away from the rest of us for the remainder of the night:

He had to sit on the Naughty Step when he got home, too. He won’t be making that mistake again in a hurry.

But I digress. I was going to talk about Clearwater and its beautiful sunset, which is the subject of the first photo (and also my desktop wallpaper, replacing Microsoft’s seminal ‘Gigantic Green Leaf’). It was gorgeous. The light had this amazing quality to it, which made everything look so soft and dreamlike. The huge pink building you can see is the hotel we had dinner in that night, and the photo was taken from the pier, which we walked to the end of to watch the sun sink into the sea. Not long after this had happened (and mighty fine it was, too), I was watching the man next to me fishing from the end of the pier, when he reeled in his line, and do you know what was on the end of it?

A GIANT CRAB WAS ON THE END OF IT.

Yes, I came face to face with my old nemesis on Clearwater Pier. Or at least, I would have come face to face with my old nemesis if it wasn’t for the fact that as soon as I saw its evil and grotesque form break the surface of the water and come swinging towards land, I got the hell outta dodge, as fast as my little legs could carry me.

It didn’t spoil the sunset. But I was glad I’d seen it after I’d been in the water rather than before…

(I am never so happy as I am when I’m on holiday…)

Whoops, by going on holiday, I’ve gone and lost all my readers again. For those of you still grimly hanging on in there a) thank you! and b) I’m just popping in to say that I took pity on you, sucked it up and coughed up the money to renew my Flickr Pro account, so I could post all one million and twelvty of my holiday photos over there, rather than forcing you all to sit through them here, like one of those boring relatives who drinks all your tea and talks for hours about their awesome! vacation! I would never do that, obviously. I’d drink all of your wine instead…

Anyway, since I’ve been home, absolutely nothing has happened. Seriously, nothing. I HATE being home. On Sunday night, I woke up in an absolute panic, totally unable to work out where I was, and convinced that the mirrored wardrobe doors (I HATE mirrored wardrobe doors) in front of me were actually windows. I was terrified. And then, when I finally realised that I was, in fact, in my own bed, in my own home? I was gutted.

(Then last night? Last night Terry woke up to find me standing at the bottom of the bed, absolutely hysterical, and screaming at him to GET OUT OF BED NOW BECAUSE OMG THERE IS TOTALLY A CRAB IN THERE!” The calmer he remained, the more hysterical I became (I mean, for God’s sake, CRAB! In the BED!), until he finally had to force me to sit down (me making “crab eyes” at the corner of the bed the whole time, and repeat veeeerrryyy sssllooowwwllly that there was. no. crab. in. the. bed. And I didn’t believe him, so I went to take refuge in the bathroom, and it was only once I got there, with the light switched on, that I started to think that hey, maybe that crab I saw wasn’t actually real. I still checked for it when I got back to bed though.)

Anyway, the photos are here. If you make it through them all, congratulations, you have better stamina than me. I’m pretty sure there are shots there that I even I couldn’t be bothered looking at. Also, someone found my blog today after searching for “Forever Amber’s shoes” so rather than disappoint that person and risk turning away a potential reader (HI! Come in! Pull up a chair! Would you like to see my holiday snaps?), here are the shoes I bought on my second-last day in Florida:

Vivienne Westwood for Melissa. On sale. Want them in every colour now.

(I’ve just realised that that person may have been searching for shoes belonging to the heroine of the BOOK Forever Amber. In which case, this will have been a crushing disappointment, for sure…)

P.S. My cold is a little better, but the coughing would be keeping me awake at night if I wasn’t still on American time, and lying awake all night anyway, watching for CRABS.

P.P.S. Sanford Airport never replied to my email about my jacket. Curses.

Well, folks, I brought an unexpected souvenir back from Florida: a heavy cold, which arrived the day before we left and gleefully packed its bags and hopped along with me for the plane ride home this morning/yesterday/whenever the hell that was. Don’t worry, though: I may have taken something with me (other than the five pairs of shoes, seven (!) dresses, two jackets and numerous other items, that is), but I left Florida something to remember me by, in the shape of my favourite blue jacket, which was last seen in the terminal at Sanford airport, and hasn’t been since. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, this relentless losing of clothes, but nope, each new loss is like a dagger to my heart, seriously.

Also lost: almost all of the video Terry took of our vacation, which he downloaded onto my laptop, and which my laptop proceeded to EAT FOR DINNER. Yeah. (Yes, we’ve tried every bit of recovery software known to man. No, it didn’t really work, although we did manage to recover about 60% of the footage, which I shall no doubt bore you with later.)

So, I’m home. I haven’t slept since Friday night, but I don’t feel remotely tired so I’ve just been outside and weeded the garden, which had returned to the wild during our absence, while Terry mowed the lawn. As I sat there, tugging up weeds (or possibly flowers: you never really know with me) with my bare hands, a plane crossed the sky above us, and I sat back and watched it. “Isn’t it strange to think,” I said to Terry, “that just a few hours ago we were up there in the sky, and a few hours before that we were all the way across the Atlantic? And now here we are, pulling up weeds in our excuse for a garden.”

It IS weird. Every time I take a flight, in fact, it reminds me of how small the world really is. It’s just not small enough, though, unfortunately, and sadly for me, the post-holiday blues have kicked in with a vengeance. From the moment I got up on Saturday morning and started systematically erasing all evidence of my existence from our rented house, to the sad opening of my suitcase on the wrong side of the Atlantic, every unpacked item provoking a new memory (“Last time I wore this, we went…” “Oh, this is what I wore that time we…”), I have felt like crying. God, aren’t first world problems a bitch?

Anyway. I should go and take some cold remedy and get some sleep. Hopefully I’ll be feeling much better in the morning…

I’ve actually already posted some of these over at Shoeperwoman, but on the off-chance that there’s anyone still reading over here, too, here are some photos from our High Tea at the Grand Floridian, which is something I highly recommend doing if you ever find yourself in this part of the world…

I know the US government won’t let me live here for more than a few weeks at a time (probably wise of them, all things considered), but if they ever want to change their minds on that, I now know exactly where I want to live: Palm Beach. All I’ll need is for everyone who reads this blog to donate $1 million dollars and I reckon I just might be able to afford a condo in one of the poorer areas. Is everyone OK with that? Good…

So, yesterday, as you’ll have gathered, we spent the day in Palm Beach, with a short visit to Boca Raton. For some reason, every time I go to south Florida, it pours with rain, and this was no exception. Here’s what I wore:

OMG NO PANTS!

(I was actually wearing shorts, by the way. I just look like I wasn’t, which possibly accounts for the weird looks I kept getting.)

That woman you can see coming up behind me? Was super-stylish, and kept following me around, purely to make me look like even more of a fool, I’m sure. Actually, ALL of the women in Palm Beach were super-stylish, and, interetsingly enough, were all dressed in black, with spindly high heels. This amused me, because last year when I was here I posted a photo of myself in a navy dress, and someone left a snarky comment saying “OMG, BLACK? In FLORIDA? How shocking.” And now every time I come out of my room dressed in black or navy, my family all chorus “BLACK? In FLORIDA?” (Even when we’re in Scotland.) Black was pretty much de rigeur down in Boca and Palm Beach, though, so I’m glad Terry let me borrow his classy black poncho thing.

We’d booked onto a Palm Beach tour, on an amphibious bus, which takes you through the town then plunges into the water of the intracoastal and takes you past the homes of people like Celine Dion and the guy who owns Walgreens, etc. I was almost sick with envy over the side of the bus/boat (Buboat?). As I say, it POURED relentlessly the whole time we were doing this, and great waves of water kept rolling off the roof and onto the people at the back of the boat (luckily we were at the front), but hey, it was all strangely atmospheric, and we still managed to have an amazing time. Plus, we have a great excuse to go back and see it in the sunshine.

Afterwards, we visited Worth Avenue, which is basically Palm Beach’s version of Rodeo Drive. Naturally, I continued to wear a black plastic bag, just to freak out all the shop assistants:

I also returned to the Mother Ship:

Yes, they had a sale. No, I didn’t buy anything, despite being sorely tempted. I suspect I will rectify that soon, though…

Aaaand, looking back at my camera, that seems to be pretty much all I have from Palm Beach, so here’s what we did for the rest of the week:

I bought shoes.

I bought more shoes.

Um, yeah.

I wore NAVY. In FLORIDA. I mean, can you EVEN?

I wrote my name in lights…

…and pretended to be in The Beatles, except with one member missing.

Here’s the missing Beatle:

And now the sun is shining again, so I’m off to do this:

Only with less posing and more, well, snoring probably. See you all soon!

Well, folks, we made it. And having only been in the States for about five hours, I’d already bought myself a Zac Posen for Target dress, which I think has to be a personal best for me in the shopping stakes. I normally wait at least 24 hours:

I mean, we only went in there for some groceries. Whoops. I don’t think Terry was quite convinced that what we’d really gone out for was bread, milk, and a Zac Posen dress, but, you know, those are the basics in life, no? Isn’t grocery shopping fun these days?

Here’s the wonderful and amazing thing about Florida for me, though: it feels so much like coming home. Much more than actually coming home does, say. And as I stood there in that same Target changing room that I always seem to end up in when I come here, with my mum struggling to yank the dress over my head (it’s one of those double layered things. I got the two layers twisted, somehow, got stuck, and had to call in reinforcements. Which just goes to prove that changing continents doesn’t make me any cleverer, sadly.), it was hard to believe that earlier that day I’d been at Glasgow airport, or waking up at home, getting ready to leave. It already feels like I’ve been here forever, and I love that. It’s like coming home.

On the plane on the way over I sat across the aisle from an elderly man, who seemed to be on his own. Being slightly emotional at the time (I welled up when we touched down and the pilot said “Welcome to Florida”…), I just couldn’t get this man out of my mind. I imagined him waking up on his own, travelling to the airport and sitting there waiting for his flight, with no one to share a few words with, or even just to sit in companionable silence with. And now here he was, still alone, and for some reason it made me feel maudlin to think of him travelling all the way across the Atlantic without a kind word from anyone other than the cabin crew, if he was lucky, and I wanted to try and reach out to him somehow, but I didn’t know what to say so I had to settle for a few friendly smiles in his direction, which probably made the poor guy think I was a lunatic.

I hope someone was waiting for him at the other end. I hope he was actually completely happy in his solitude, or that his wife, or friend or whatever was just sitting in another part of the cabin, because ever since we landed,  that old man’s been on my mind. I feel so lucky to be here, in my favourite place in the world, and to have my family here with me. (I also feel a bit teary and introspective, like someone who hasn’t slept properly for three days, and who has drunk a bit too much coffee to make up for it. Note to self: stop doing that.) And I’m going to try and enjoy every single second of this trip, as much as I possibly can, because, well, you never know how long next winter will be.. .

I’m also going to probably buy some more shoes and dresses. But I guess you already knew that…

Obligatory photos:

(Terry really needs to eat a sandwich, doesn’t he?)

I still have the post-holiday blues. Especially now that it’s rained on St. Swithins Day, which means 40 days of rain for us! (Not that we’ll really notice the difference here in Scotland, obviously…)

Anyway, here, have a video, courtesy of Terry. I think he misses it too…

Girl to me at the horse-riding-on-the-beach experience in Florida: So, where are you all from?

Me: Scotland

Her: Wow! How long of a drive is that?!

I felt really bad having to explain that it’s actually on a whole other continent and you can’t drive from it to Florida. I really wish you could, though.

We’ve also had, “Is that in Canada?” and “Is that in Texas?” Ah, the fun of living in one of the more obscure corners of the world! (I should add here that I don’t expect many Scottish people would be able to point out various American places on a map either, so I don’t think it’s an “American” thing, particularly, just a consequence of living in a country not a lot of people know much about.)

Another fun fact about living in a small, obscure country: not many airlines actually fly here, which is why, for our planned winter holiday, we’re either going to have to a) fly to London first, thus making the trip much more expensive and lengthy or b) just go to the freaking Canary Islands again. Because everywhere else we’ve thought about going, it’s a case of “can’t get there from here.”  Or “can get there from here, but it’ll be freezing at that time of year.” Gah.

Needless to say, pretty much ALL I’ve thought about since we got back is “where can we go next?” Nope, STILL not over them blues…

On the way back to the airport last week, we passed a restaurant that had the tag-line “Nuthin’ mo’ betta’.” No, seriously: it was written just like that. We didn’t stop there, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) so I can’t confirm whether there really IS anything “mo’ betta” than Billy’s Shrimp Shack, or whatever the hell it was called, but it kinda sums up the holiday for me – and I should add here that I do not mean to imply anything about Floridian grammar by that statement. (Although, note to Disney: “sweets” does not have an apostrophe. Just FYI.)

For me, there is nothing, er, more better – no, it’s no use, I’m not going to be able to keep writing that, sorry – than being on holiday, and since I’ve been home, I’ve had the worst case of post-holiday blues ever. Ever.

It’s not just the weather. Sure, the weather is part of it, and a pretty big part at that, but just to pre-empt all of the people who will want to tell me that OMG, the weather was just FABULOUS here while I was always (Seriously, why do people do that? Why are they always so keen to tell you how wonderful the weather has been while you’ve been on vacation? Is it to try and make you feel like you shouldn’t have bothered going? Because it doesn’t work, if so. It’s like all those people who go, “Well, you don’t have much of a suntan!” as if they want you to feel like you have somehow FAILED at vacationing or something. But I digress.), the weather isn’t the only thing I miss. It’s all of it. Everything, right down to the sound of the crickets at night and the smell of the mall on my new sweater. Silly things. Inconsequential things. Things you don’t actually travel to see, but miss like hell when you come home.

Oh, and the weather of course. And Sephora.

So I’ve been feeling pretty sad these past few days, and although I always feel sad when I come home, this time the feeling has been much harder to shake than usual. Rubin, however, has been doing his very best to cheer me up. He’s been staying with Terry’s mum while we were gone, and while he was there, he managed to eat three pineapple cakes and a Kit Kat over and above his allotted food and treats. (Yes, I know dogs aren’t supposed to eat chocolate, but he stole it out of Terry’s mum’s handbag and suffered no ill effects, even although he ALSO ate the wrapper. He stole the cakes from her bed, where she’d placed them for a few minutes to keep them out of his reach while she unpacked her shopping. I have no idea how he got onto the bed, because he can’t normally do that. He must’ve REALLY wanted those cakes, is all I can say…) Terry’s mum and Keith, her partner, are absolutely amazed by his capacity to eat, and to keep on eating, even although he must surely to God be full, and can’t possibly be actually TASTING anything, on account of he’s swallowing it whole.It amazes me, too.

Anyway, it’s good to have him home, even if it’s not good to actually BE home. Since we landed on Friday, I have spent more or less every waking moment searching online for holidays to anywhere. Terry, meanwhile, has been making this:

Well, we’re headed home tomorrow, assuming our plane doesn’t drop out of the sky – and recent events lead me to believe that this is a strong possibility – and I don’t think it would be possible for me to feel any more depressed about that than I am right now. I am absolutely miserable, which obviously makes me a lot of fun to be around – sorry, Terry! I’ve never been one of those people who goes around saying things like, “It’s good to have a break, but it’s good to come home, too!” or “You know, if the UK just got the weather no-one would ever want to leave!”, so my family will probably have to prise my hands off the door frame tomorrow to get me to leave. Gah.

My case is currently weighing in at just under the 20k luggage allowance our airline gives us, but that’s only with three pairs of shoes stuffed into my carry-on (which was also weighed on the way out here – seriously, who DOES that?), not including the pair I bought today, which…. actually, no, I’m too embarrassed to even speak about that. Let’s just say that the Neiman Marcus sale I mentioned? Was a really good sale. A REALLY good sale. Let us never speak of it again, though. Seriously.

Anyway, I’m off to drink more wine re-weigh my suitcase a few more times, so I will leave you with yet more – more! – of my holiday snaps. GOD.