Y Viva Alemania

I few weeks ago I mentioned my desire to have a holiday this year; maybe one final chance for real quality time with the boys before they firmly and inevitably decide I'm someone they've no desire in spending one single second with, but such a notion has managed to sneak off my radar since then. But now an opportunity has sprung from the dimension of the unexpected and after some initial misgivings I've decided to grasp it firmly with both hands, tie it around my waist and cling on to it until my ear-drums pop and I bite off my tongue.

The opportunity has presented itself via Colin, who asked me last night if we all fancied coming to Germany with him over Easter. Apparently he'd been speaking to Maria (on my phone, I assume. A hefty contribution to the next phone bill may be wilfully demanded, methinks) who's agreed to allow him to pop back to der fatherland to tie up some trailing ends and to spend some time with Holly and Amber. I said I thought you were of the view that Holly and Amber should be allowed to get on with their lives without you? Colin replied that surely I've realised that much of what he says by now is b*llocks and that was amongst the biggest load of b*llocks that's had ever tumbled from his lips. I'm not going to fight Maria for custody or anything, he went on to explain, but I had a long think and I don't want the pair of them to just skedaddle out of my life. I expressed my reservation of how difficult that may be with them living in a different country, but Colin just shrugged and said he'll see how things go.

I asked Colin what was his thinking about inviting us to Germany with him but again he just shrugged and said he didn't know really, he just thought we might appreciate a break. He said he concedes Cologne doesn't normally get the juices flowing on the list of potential holiday destinations, but he does know a few nice places around, and Cologne is adequately within driving distance of Holland, France and Luxembourg so we could make a bit of a tour of it, if we felt like it.

Not quite what I had in mind when my original notion of taking a holiday (as I don't like hot weather, nor the sea, not sitting around swimming pools reading Dan Brown or John Grisham tomes, nor holiday hot-spot night life, nor being bored in the evenings because there's no English-speaking channels on the TV. Actually, now I come to think about it, I've no idea what my preferred holiday would be. Two weeks at home without having to go to work, I think) but there's quite a measure of attraction in the offer. I think the old bank balance might just hold up to such a notion, unless the redundancies threatened at work materialise and plonk squarely on yours truly's bonce. My usual end-of-finanicial year bonus would have nicely covered it but it was announced yesterday at work that in line with the current precariously unique financial atmosphere all bonuses have been cancelled and all salaries across the company have been frozen. I'm sure the unions'll create a slight pong (not that I'm a member of one) but it's either that or an increase in job-losses so I guess they're handcuffed.

As I said, I'm *almost* sold, but it really depended on the boys (and all three of them) coming with me. So I decided to give it a go, as in two-thirds of the cases I'm significantly on the up (balanced sadly by Andrew's current opinion of me).

Lukas needed no persuasion, and expressed an instant affirmative. But then currently I think if I asked Lukas to climb up the side of the house dressed as Tinkerbell and clear the guttering of decaying leaves with a cocktail-stick held between his teeth I think he'd say yes. And why? Because the cast is off, everything is super-duper and progressing brilliantly and he'll back stealing basketballs from the sweaty paws of dwarfing boys in about a month. His de-cast-ed arm looked terrible - alien and translucent, as thin as a whip and with a snakeskin-sheath of dead skin, most of which he had raked off with his fingernails within the first ten minutes. He spent most of the evening scratching at his freshly-released skin with a euphoric, faraway look twinkling in his blue eyes.

So Lukas, he say Da!

Also into the surprisingly easy to convince arena stepped Gabriel. I explained what Colin had suggested and he mulled it over whilst trying to pretend that his dinner that evening did not contain any vegetables that I would later request consumed despite his protest that he was full ('Gabriel Sated' is now a standard English GCSE-syllabus example of an oxymoron). He was not too keen on the Holly and Amber part of things as he'd found them frustrating and annoying during their scant week over here around Christmas/New Year. But the prospect of breaking his foreign-realms virginity overwhelmed this and he chucked his hat in.

So, Gabriel, he say Da!

But Andrew, he keep schtum!

Which is not a response to any enquiry from me regarding a proposed holiday to Germany, but a continued concrete attitude to everything and everyone. Of course when Andrew decides upon a course of action to be undertaken in reaction to some event it's almost impossible to persuade him there might be a different approach he has not considered. I suspect - following Colin's attempt to educate him on how milk is produced - my brother dropped several million places down Andrew's list of favoured folk so getting Colin back up there is going to require a lot of shoving from all of us, although the fact Andrew is not known for holding grudges gives us hope.

I need a lengthy chat with Andrew. He needs to recover a lot of his life that he lost when Kevin sucked up all his emotional and physical needs. I'm not in the mood *just* yet.

Spent the evening filling out online passport applications for my younger pair (Andrew already has one). I'm tingling with excitement like a pancake watching somone take the lemon juice out of the fridge about all this, and you can stick me in a cannon and fire me over the moon if Andrew says da as well.