Anyone who knows me knows I never go on holiday. Two reasons really; since becoming a home owner I never felt I could truly afford a holiday and I have always been so happy in the homes I’ve lived in since, that I didn’t feel the need to go away and potentially to somewhere less comfortable than my own home.  

All that changed at the end of July this year. For some unknown reason (at that time) I suddenly decided to go away on holiday!  With the help of my sister I booked to go to St Andrews for a week at the start of August.  The holiday house wasn’t quite what was promised on the website but it was adequate. St Andrews on the other hand was everything and more it promised to be…and everything various people had told me it was. Certainly it took me a few days to find my way around the part of the town I was staying in (being severely sight impaired and having next to no visuo-spatial awareness doesn’t make navigating new environment easy) but I fell in love with the town.  Beautiful beaches for my guide dog to play on, immaculate streets with many lovely floral displays and every kind of shop you could ever wish for. It was one of the best, if not the best, holiday I have ever had.

But why did I suddenly decide to change a 13 year habit and go on holiday? Before I went to St Andrews I thought it was because this summer had been so nice but living in a flat I felt a bit robbed of the sunshine and garden/outdoors time many others had experienced (as I’m sure did my guide dog).  So I rationalised that going to a seaside town to a holiday house with a garden would balance the scales a bit.  A couple of days into my holiday and I began to think that wasn’t the reason after all. When I came home I knew the reason for certain that I’d gone on holiday.