Arrangements made.

After a full day spent making arrangements, booking flights, cars, hotels, relatives back bedrooms and sundry divers means of transportation, Mrs S and I are lighter in pocket but easier of mind. Well, at least she is. I'm just the designated driver on this particular mission.

We will be arriving in the UK this Summer for a brief familial sojourn attempting to studiously ignore every negative, while spinning the positive. I do not intend visiting any of my old stamping grounds, apart from a side trip to visit parent and pick up a passenger, and will be looking for such diversions in the way of lounging around, either in a pool, sauna, or with a book, avoiding watching Television, and not giving the proverbial tinkers cuss about anything but the specific task in front of me. Fortunately, every hotel we are booked into have pools and saunas. My swimming shorts will be packed.

Will be spending as little time as possible in shopping areas. Will drive at or slightly below the posted speed limit. Will avoid contact with anyone in a uniform or having even the vaguest whiff of officialdom about them. Will give Charity Muggers a brief withering look of contempt before ignoring their protestations and going about my own business. Of course there will be the tedious ministrations of Airport Security, but as I intend carrying nothing but my duty free allowance across the various borders I must cross, they will have no cause to give me grief. I may be caught pointing and laughing at the odd Windmill, and privately marvel at the delusion that caused its consideration as a means of effective electrical generation. I will probalby gasp briefly in amazement at the cost of living in the UK. I may be heard softly sighing with relief as the plane taking me home to Canada exits UK airspace.

At various junctures I may snore pointedly, at which point Mrs S will stick an elbow in my ribs. The die is cast, the money spent, and I have my own thoughts about what will please me.