End of Another Season

We've reached the melancholy part of my annual long Summer break.  The Summer is fast ebbing away, the children have (mainly) gone back to school, the tourists have (mostly) gone home and most people are back at work.  Consequently, I spent part of today on a windy, near deserted, beach, with the sky overcast and the sea pounding the shingle.  It seemed strange to think that the now near deserted car park was, only last week, packed full of cars, in turn packed full of kids, dogs, buckets and spades and inflatable mattresses and the like.  It was the same all down the bit of coast I drove down on my way there: deserted beaches, empty car parks.  Like I said, all very melancholy.  Yet there is something I like about this 'end of season' period: the relative peace and calm, the feeling of still being free while everyone else has gone back to 'normality'.  I used to feel guilty about still being on holiday while everyone else had seemingly gone back to work. Quite irrational, I know - it isn't as if everyone takes the same time off, there were plenty of people still working over the past couple of weeks while I've been off.  It's just that feeling you get during August, that the whole world is on holiday, which abruptly ends with the coming of September.

I can't say that, so far, this holiday has been exactly 'vintage', but it has had its highlights, mainly early on, when the weather was at its best.  There's still the rest of the week to go, though, so who knows what excitements still lie in store?  One thing that has been successful this holiday has been my mission to be anti-social.  I've managed to avoid just about everyone.  Most people don't seem to realise that when I'm on holiday, it isn't just work and the like I'm taking a break from, but people as well.  (Obviously, I make exceptions for visitors like Frank Nora from the Overnightscape, when he and his wife were in London).  So, I've spent the past couple weeks avoiding anybody I know.  I went into the other bar at the pub, for instance, to avoid someone from work I'd seen and I've been ignoring answer phone messages from others, (if asked why I didn't get back to them, I'll just say that I was on holiday, they won't know that I didn't actually go away anywhere).  It's been great.  Increasingly, I find that the one thing I crave when I'm working is simply to be left alone.  So, when I'm on holiday, that's what I do - enjoy my solitude and the freedom it brings me.  Anyway, that's the holiday so far.