We’re going to our first festival together next weekend. It will either be a tremendous success or a huge failure. I am a little scared.

We’re heading to The Sunrise Festival near Frome, to grab our first taste of family festival fun. It looks amazing. But I am also a little scared. (Did I mention that I’m a little scared?)

Set against the backdrop of the stunning Thoulstone Park, The Sunrise Festival is billed as, “Another world”, incorporating a “micronation” of different spaces.

These spaces include a “Global Village” (which, in turn is made up of various areas – including “The Well Being Village” *happy sigh*), “Storylands”, a magical world of kids’ theatre, woodland storytellers and various play area settings and “The Shire”, which includes a space for crafts and eco-build projects. All of this is intertwined with lots of live music.

As a family, we like adventures; last summer we spent a week camping in a safari tent (our daughter had just turned two – many people said we were mad). However, we also like the ease of slobbing around in our PJ’s at the weekend, watching Saturday Kitchen and eating bacon sarnies.

I’m looking for a happy medium. Excitement and adventure, mixed in with the odd creature comfort and relaxation.

If you know how to achieve that when taking a toddler to a festival (is it even possible?!) then do let me know.

I need all the help I can get.

***

We will be reviewing The Sunrise Festival, taking place at Thoulstone Park near Frome, May 30th – June 2nd.

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I am all of the above.

I haven’t always been this way. In fact, I used to be pretty bloody good at switching off. Properly switching off I mean; shutting the laptop and turning down the volume on my phone. Pre-motherhood I thought a busy day was a 10 hour shift reporting on breaking news stories, with a rushed tea and only seven hours sleep rather than eight. Back in those days, I could quite easily walk through the door at the end of a long day and not think twice about soaking in a bath or watching a film.

Partly, I think the rise of social media is to blame. But I also think my own busy life doesn’t help. I spend so much of my time multi-tasking, communicating and juggling different roles, that when I actually get to sit down and stop…. I can’t.

I read this post by Alison at Not Another Mummy Blog the other day and found myself nodding my head in agreement. Alison admitted she’s not very good at “switching off” and often finds herself turning to blogging or tweeting etc when she should be lazing in the bath or watching telly.

Like Alison, I find it hard to stop. There’s always one more thing to do, one more piece of work to finish, one more chore to complete. When I eventually do sit down, I’m so out of practice at relaxing that I tend to sit there a big ball of twitchy nervousness. In an attempt to still my mind I do the worst thing possible – check my phone. And then my brain’s full of the chatter of Twitter or Facebook… and I’m even more wired than when I first sat down!

I was telling all this to a good friend of mine recently. And because she is such a good friend, a couple of weeks later she sent a book to me in the post. It came (unannounced) with a note, telling me to read it and make sure I started to be a bit kinder to myself. “Even if you let yourself have just one lie-in, then my work is done”, wrote my friend. (I have bloody brilliant friends.)

And I have been reading it. And I have been taking note. How To Be Idle is not for the faint-hearted. It encourages pulling sick days and ignoring deadlines. It’s probably not a book the boss would want you to start following to the letter. But it also makes a very good point: we are so busy these days, caught up in chasing material items and doing what we think we should be doing, that we don’t spend enough time thinking.

I can’t remember the last time I just sat down and mindlessly did a bit of knitting for a while. Or watched a film without feeling the need to check my emails at the same time. Or went for a walk (without my phone and the urge to capture it on Instagram) with absolutely no purpose.

Excuse me while I go all deep on you – but these things are all important for the soul. Taking time out, whether it’s lying in bed and looking at the ceiling, baking a cake just because you fancy it, pottering in the garden or meandering through a park for a little stroll, are all valid activities. I feel ten times better when I do something indulgent and lazy. I work ten times better afterwards, I am more focused, productive and organised.

So I’m making a pledge to myself to be more idle. Even if it’s just one evening in the week where I turn off my computer and fire down the phone. Rather than doing something I feel I ought to be doing, I’m going to do something I want to be doing.

Care to join me?

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As a weekend of mundane chores and To Do lists opened up before me like a yawning chasm of drudgery, I sighed over the days when weekends were different.

It’s over three years ago now – more like four really – when weekends meant late nights on dancefloors, drinks in the pub, shopping trips and lazy afternoons at the cinema. In the absence of swimming lessons or trips to the tip, Sundays were spent sleeping in until midday, followed by an impromptu pub lunch and an evening in front of a DVD.

These days, weekends are punctuated with a morning in a cold swimming pool, a flurry of housework and piles of dirty laundry.

The thing is, I actually rather like weekends full of the mundane minutae of domestic life. Being a busy family, we’re often rushing around the country to see friends or relatives. If we’re not off visiting someone, I’m likely to be at a work event or meeting a deadline. Call me old, but Monday sometimes sees me a broken woman, yearning for a couple of days at home with nothing much to do.

A morning pottering around the garden with my toddler, faffing around with bits of blossom and rogue dandelions was actually just what I needed yesterday. Boring it may be, but it was also calm and strangely satisfying. (My 21 year old self is mortified at that last sentence).

You know what I don’t miss about those former weekends? Feeling regularly hungover – and that dawning realisation on a Monday morning that I spent more than I had.

Although Mother Guilt often makes an appearance in my life these days, Weekend Guilt has long gone. And I don’t miss it one little bit.

If the mundane means a weekend spent with two people I love very much, then bring it on.

What’s your ideal weekend? Do you look forward to ones where there are no plans at all?

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