(Our picnic spot this afternoon…)

Hello you! We’re off to France and we’re taking you with us. Are you ready? The Garda in Rosslare checked that there were only the two of us in the van so you’re safe to come out now. As it’s France, there’s probably going to be beautiful picture opportunities and the food is definitely going to be amazing. I might need to talk about facilities (I mean toilets) but I’ll keep it brief. Something tells me rubbish bins and recycle bins might be a problem this time, I’ll let you know. One thing for sure Ruby is in tip top condition since her visit to the motorhome mechanic in France in June so we don’t envisage any drama there. We have an idea the route will take us left at Cherbourg and then south east as we search for parking with a view.

It took two hours longer than we planned to leave the house. And in spite of having those two extra hours I still managed to forget something. Nothing important. The list of important things is very small: passports, money, cards, phones and Denis’ computer. Oh and the motorhome. We have remembered all the important things.

The something I forgot was my phone’s tripod. I had this great idea that I was going to YouTube some crafting. I’m great with the ideas. This isn’t me blowing my own trumpet, it’s just true! I have no problem coming up with ideas for new projects. I do, however have a bit of a problem finishing all my projects. Well, let me rephrase that, I used to have a problem finishing all my projects. Things have changed.

(Yes our picnic spot is at a petrol station… 30 minutes from home)

You might remember the book from the last blog? The one I was afraid I wouldn’t complete? Well, I didn’t complete it. Are you shocked? Would you like to hear the whole story? As always I have buckets of time today and tomorrow because today we’re driving to the harbour (Rosslare) and tomorrow the captain of Stena Line is doing the work of sailing the ship across the Irish Sea and then the English Channel to Cherbourg.

Ok back to the whole story… It’s about a woman who was great at thinking up new ideas and she was great at imagining them being very fast to finish. The beginnings were fantastic. Full of the sheer joy of anticipation. Imagining idea after idea finished in no time at all. But the endings, they were terrible, full of angst and recriminations. Every little or big idea took way longer than she imagined. Too long, she thought. This will never be finished, she cried. She became disenchanted, disillusioned, disappointed, disempowered and distinctly sad. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had this experience but being distinctly sad can bugger up an idea and scupper a project. The longer the project took the sadder she got and in the end she nearly always gave up.

(I didn’t sleep well last night with all the excitement and so… I was up for sun rise! Isn’t Ireland only gorgeous?)

You might need to go back a few posts to remind yourself of how worried I was about not getting the book project finished. I was afraid, no, mortified that I might give up. So there I was in June, newly back from my travels ready to finish the book when I got another idea… actually I got a few ideas and a retreat.

(Can you see the boat with the water skier behind? That was 7.08am today (Thursday) in Greystones!)

I’ll tell you about the ideas and the retreat tomorrow but first I want to tell you that I found a way to recognise that having loads of ideas is actually a superpower… as long as you follow the rules: 1. One cannot turn all their ideas into projects and 2. Projects take longer than one initially thinks, a lot longer. I will be finishing the previously mentioned book project on this trip and Denis says there’s probably ten hours left in it… of course we all know he’s a bit too optimistic for my liking. So, there’s probably about thirty hours left in the book project. I’ll be starting it on Monday.

(And here’s sunset, 8.17pm Rosslare)

In the meantime I promised my friend that I would tell her what it’s like to arrive in France and have nothing to do, nothing at all (she had a hard week at work). I’m taking the weekend off all ideas and projects so that I can tell her and I’ll tell you too.

Wish me luck, Mairead.