Ah! The bliss of being back in the safety of my own wi-fi.

I know being on holiday and getting away from it all is supposed to be relaxing, but it really isn’t, not for me. I spent the whole week unable to escape the niggling feeling that THINGS were happening and I did not know about them and could not find out about them. This is not my idea of a good time.

And believe me, trying to keep up with a daily blog seems like a less than clever idea when you are standing underneath a tree trying to shelter from the driving rain, balancing the laptop on a low branch, frantically refreshing a screen that reads ‘connection timeout’. And a big thank you to those extremely patient members of my family who sat uncomplainingly in the car while I drove round the streets of Remote Welsh Coastal Town trying to find a ‘hot’-spot, and kept a serene silence while I moaned, repeatedly, ‘I swear I could get a wireless connection here yesterday!’

And although I had NO SIGNAL ALL WEEK, I couldn’t help looking at my phone every 30 seconds, just in case a bar had miraculously appeared, giving myself a persistent crick in my neck. It turns out that miracles rarely happen in Farthest Wales.

Great holiday though. Amazing beaches and beautiful scenery that I have forced the GorgeousTeen to admire all week. You should go. Just make sure you move to Orange first.

Anyway, quick catch up.

1. Wondering what happened to the leaping gorgeous blonde A level girls? They’ve have all gone to the Reading Festival to get photographed in – new cliche alert! – very short denim shorts, wellies and just enough mud to contrast with their unfeasibly long hair:

2. I appreciate this hardly counts as news, but the Reading Festival is shockingly wet and muddy. The Environment Agency have lowered the Thames by six inches in an effort to make those gorgeous girls less muddy. Some might say that holding a festival on a flood plain wasn’t the best idea ever. Who knew?

3. Things my daughters have argued about – new entry. When SparklyDaughter grows up and runs a cafe, can GothicDaughter be a waitress? No, she cannot. (Fair enough, to be honest. She would be a terrible waitress. She can’t hold a thought in her head for more than 5 seconds at a time, she can rarely be persuaded to brush her hair and her hands are frankly a health hazard.) But can she paint a mural on the wall of this putative cafe? Yes, she may, ‘as long as there are no paintings of DEAD THINGS,’ says SparklyDaughter. I’m so glad we’ve resolved this issue.

4. It turns out that my prediction was correct and girls DID do better than boys in, like, EVERY EXAM EVER despite the fact that the entire exam system has been redesigned to try and stop this happening; to quote the Telegraph, by scrapping coursework ‘which it was assumed helped improve girls’ results because they worked harder and more consistently to produce it.’ And Lord knows we wouldn’t want an exam system that rewards hard, consistent work. As I also predicted, this was all slightly galling for the girls to read and hear on results day. But the good news for TicTacGirl is – nothing tastes as good as THREE As feels….

5. I finally got to see the Emergency Dentist who told me (after two hours wait and giving me an X ray in the waiting room – surely not best practice? Perhaps they do things differently in Wales) that there was NOTHING HE COULD DO and the nerve was dying. To which my reaction was HURRY UP AND FLIPPING DIE already, bloody nerve.

Yes I do believe we are up to date.

Now just off to Google things all evening, just because I CAN.

Ha.