The last three weeks have been the usual whirlwind of life, with a few extra events thrown into the mix. Both my children had their birthdays, turning 6 and 3 respectively, just two weeks apart. Stupid planning on our part; June/July 2038 is going to be expensive – so whilst we can get away with joint celebrations, we will. We leveraged our customers, exchanging branded clothing made by the company my husband and I run, for party supplies; a bouncy castle, a magician, a disco and BBQ, along with arts and crafts, bubbles and balloons… And set about the invitations. After the event, with almost 100 people turning up on the day, I joked during the epic clear up that we hadn’t thrown a birthday party at all, it had actually turned into more of a summer fete.

Excitingly, we’ve also booked our summer holiday. Since then we’ve spent most of our time trying to figure out ways to make the journey easier. This has almost exclusively been focused on how to avoid queuing to check in the kids’ car seats, and absolutely nothing to do with getting to the airport or being on the plane. I don’t know anyone who enjoys queuing, especially for so long that they nearly miss their flight – which is what happened to us last year. Of course, skipping straight to security checks and getting through to the lounge quicker won’t actually change the length of the journey as a whole – we’ll still leave our house at X time, and reach our destination at Y time, but the feel of the journey will be 100 times better.

Listening to Rory Sutherland on The Spark, talking about transport for humans, he discusses exactly this – whilst the duration of the journey perhaps isn’t changed, it’s about the quality of the journey, rather than the quantity. This seems patently obvious once you hear it, it’s just not something I’d actively thought about until that moment.

Those excitements aside, I’ve been listening to podcasts, reading books, SCABs and online resources, and trying to learn one of the new skills – although with the price of eggs at the moment, I think it might be time to choose a different one. I am anxious about the workload come September, but surely that’s normal. I’m telling myself that with a young family, I’m used to being busy, and who needs sleep, anyway?!

Alex Harbour

@ajharbour